My name is not Dreamy, but that’s what everyone calls me anyway so that’s what I’m going to write down. I have a perfectly good name actually, it is much prettier than "Dreamy" whichever language you say it in. Sanjati sounds alright, sort of perky, so I think people who talk to me in Seenkeno are alright. It is the same in KouKoun apparently, so I get on alright with the Damai, who are the local tribe of Pagoth. They’re nice although a bit on the mystically side and they don’t wear many clothes which embarrasses certain other members of the brigade when they have to go on trade talks. I think they’d blush less if they got a bit more exercise and spent a bit less time in unnatural indoor pursuits like accountancy, lawerising and writing books (the boring sort with page after page of numbers not the good sort with lots of blood and swords and evil wizards and mysterious goddesses and beautiful heroines like this one is going to have).

Ruya is even better, which is what it is in Agrammos. The Captain always calls me Ruya which is nice, I just wish a few other people would too. We don’t have many Kavala riding nomads here although there are quite a few Kavala and I’ve managed to rustle up some dye which can stain their feathers pretty eye-searingly red for clothes. I don’t wear them of course but the Kemes snap them up. I think they’re colour-blind actually- surely nobody could have taste that bad if they could see the clashes?

Permimpi makes me sound like some sort of street-walker so I frown a lot when people talk to me in Vorras. I ought to stop it because it’ll give me wrinkles and people get fed up of you if you frown all the time. A pensive slightly worried look works quite well on princes with a protective instinct I am told but I haven’t had chance to try it out yet. Sadly most people in this part of the world speak Vorras and princes are few and far between in our glorious empire and even if Penggoda wins the vote and we all get to call ourselves princes I’ll still know that most of us think that wearing clothes that only have three weeks’ worth of beer stains is dangerously decadent.

There’s several ways you can say it in Leekeeo. Most people call me Oneero which means dream or vision, which I suppose is alright, but Rasa always calls me Oneerothies which means dreamlike, fantastic and grand. He’s sweet and I think he must have learnt Leekeeo just because he found out I think Vorras sounds like sailors cursing. Penggoda always calls me Oneeropolo which he think is a cute pet name and I think is almost as sick-making as some of his medicines. The Captain thinks my real name is Ajal which is Vorras for lifetime, destiny or death which is scary but that isn’t my real name either. Vreeo told me never to tell anyone else my real name so I’m not going to.

Anyway, it is the somethingth year of somebody of Galadiahos I suppose but stuck in this primitive hellhole magnificent new city I don’t know who is in charge or how long they have been. T’Heros says I have to take more executive responsibility now so I’m making the executive decision to call this Year One and if you really care about this sort of thing you can go and get all your boring books full of numbers and who married who and who died when and work it all out. I’ll even let you write it in the margin if you like. But the rest of us are going to skip forward to the sword fights and love scenes and you really ought to get out more you know.

In case you hadn’t gathered it yet, I’ve taken over from Old Grumpy as Annalist. Now we’ve got a city (well, hill with some huts on) to call our own, we’ve had to have a bit of a re-organisation. T’Heros is still in charge of course and so he gets the blame when it all goes wrong. I think that’s why he tries not to ever decide anything ever, it’s probably safer. Pretty much every other post has been doubled up, with a Lieutenant-in-the-city and a Lieutenant-in-the-field and so on. I’ve got ink on my fingers already so I’m going to invent some nice names and hope they catch on. The one who stays in the city is called the Keeverna Politikos (that means leader of the city or leader who talks a lot) and the one who does all the exciting things is the Keeverna Zeleea (the enviable leader). Setrika is the Keeverna Politikos and I am the first ever Keeverna Zeleea which is why it has to have a good name. I don’t think the brigade are going to call a Sergeant anything other than a Sergeant but maybe the Politikos and Zeleea will stick for the others too.

Vreeo has pretty much retired as Sorceror and now runs a pub which is halfway up the hill from the docks to the "citadel" (apparently anything with a wall is a citadel now, which makes my tent a marble and gold palace in the fine Persegaladian style of old Pembelian). Vreeo’s beer is apparently quite good if you like that sort of thing. I like going there to talk to Harapse who is only a skull but who is a more intelligent conversationalist than most people around here. I’ve promised Harapse that she can come with me on an adventure before too long but I’m not sure I should take her away just yet as Vreeo likes her company too.

Old Grumpy has taken over as sorceror although he always moans about having to be a half-time engineer as well which is silly because Rasa is quite qualified and made me the first running-water latrine in the whole of Golah Novak which was sweet of him.

Vika is the Enviable Sergeant Zeleea although I’m sure nobody wants to be Vika, probably not even Vika. I am heartbroken to learn that she will not be accompanying me on my first mission. She’s probably got a sore throat from over exertion on the parade ground (and possibly in the back room of the tavern although you didn’t hear that from me). Apotek is the Sergeant Politikos and is in charge of making sure the farmers don’t smash up our grand city which is a bit of laugh since we haven’t got a city and more to the point we haven’t got any farmers either.

Rapeezo is, of course, the Quartermaster Politikos. I even saw him smile once or twice. I think he must go into his storehouse at night, strip off to his loincloth and roll around in all the money going Whoop Whoop Whoop Wheeee! Lelang the Auctioneer is our Enviable Quartermaster and I’m going to need his sleazy tactics for buying and selling soon on the mission I think.

Sheeda is the Swordmaster Politikos and she’s pretty fed up about it, especially because Lumpius is the Enviable Swordmaster and gets to go off and do things. I think T’Heros is probably going to have to rethink on this one or Sheeda’s going to quit. I think I’ll have a nice reasonable chat with him about it before she decides he can still be captain with only the one testicle.

Lunak is of course the Chaplain Politikos. We don’t really have a Chaplain Zeleea, at least not yet. Instead the Captain in his infinite wisdom has decided to make Stutter the Standard-bearer. I gather it took him a week to get the swearing done and I think it would have been a good day and a half even without the stu-stu-stu-stuttering. Apparently he has been told to "purify the office and make it work within the brigade". I’ve been quite insubordinate enough for one page so I won’t say what I think of THAT.

We haven’t got an Enviable Engineer just yet either, because we don’t have a candidate of sufficient merit and status (T’Heros) or because we only have one Engineer and he’s busy (me). I’m supposed to tempt a master shipwright with the job if I get a chance. Tempting- come to sunny Golah Novak, where you can build ships and live in the lap of luxury in our magnificent new citadel, guaranteed free of drafts and totally devoid of vermin of any kind. So I’m after a master shipbuilder who is also staggeringly dim.

The Captain’s ordered me to lead the first mission of the brigade since we settled in Golah Novak a year or so ago. He told me to take almost the whole company but I eventually argued this down to a much more sensible two dozen which is enough to be able to make a good defence of a decent position but isn’t so many that the local warlords are going to get worried even if we do all turn up in town on the same day. I’m supposed to go and buy a navy and a population of skilled peasants as far as I can work out. I have got chests and chests full of silver and amber to do it with, which we’ve spend the last six months digging for in the mountains and panning for in the streams which is really bad for your hands because they go all white and wrinkled which isn’t very attractive unless your an albino slug. Unfortunately there were lots and lots of albino slugs and leeches and other slimy things in the forests where you find the best amber in the rivers, so my fingers had marriage proposed by amorous icky things dozens of times each night. But you don’t want to know about that.

We’ve got what is laughably referred to as "the company ship" which is a small fishing boat with a sail that some of the ex-sailors cobbled together for fishing on the lake and sailing up and down the river, which was quite useful for getting all that amber and silver back to the city. The other reason I wanted to limit the mission to two dozen was so we’d all fit on the boat, because I’m going to try to sail back to Pembelian by hugging the coast. The Captain was a little uneasy about this- he insists that we’re going to need cavalry and that we should go over land, but read Kanela’s annals to see why I think that’s a particularly T’Heroic idea even for T’Heros. He wanted Stutter to go too but he’s busy trying to come up with a way of scamming the villagers at the mouth of the river that their goddess (who is called Induk although we haven’t been formally introduced) is Aurora’s long-lost daughter. Stutter explained (eventually) that they thought a mother was a better image because of the way that Induk is their protective deity- and a mother would be a greater protector than the daughter. I’d have thought that even religious nutters might have realised that daughter’s don’t generally get born a thousand years before their mothers but what do I know?

Before we set off I went scouting with Olok-Olok and we reckon that we can use one of the lesser branches of the river which is now called the Sungai Jalan (River Road, which sounds better than Hutan Rawa which means valley of the bogs). So we tried that and discovered that a small fishing boat was pretty much the biggest thing that could navigate the Sungai Lohor rather than the Sungai Jalan Induk. We managed to get through but not without having to get out and push to get free of the all the mangrove roots and rotting stuff. Epago nearly got his leg bitten off by a huge crocodile thing which the Kelana call a Majka Usche which means mother mouth and gives you some idea of what one looks like. The kemes members of our group now have new Majka-skin boots which do not go with the strips of last year’s rotting carapaces which they seem determined to wear instead of sensible armour. My black-and-pearl number is getting a little behind the times I suppose but it is still trend-setting and I doubt they have it in Pembelian so I will keep it for now. The Majka’s jaw looked excellent after it was cleaned up – it is almost as long as the boat! We’ve arranged it around the rail so it looks scary (and the handspan teeth will put off a boarder trying to climb over it too). Topeekos says the teeth are so big mostly so it can crack open Kotac shells which I can understand because Kotac are these big floating cartwheely things that taste brilliant.

Anyway, we got ourselves to the coast and sneaked around the Rak ruins at the mouth of the Sungai Lohor and set off north up the coast. Since we’d started at the beginning of spring we got a few storms and squalls but we found plenty of bays to hide in and we weren’t the only ones. Once we got up to the northern coast of the Pentai Hantu we found other fishing boats taking shelter in the bays. We cut across the bay once we could see the other side so we could avoid the ruins of the Rak city on the delta and we were going to give Pelabuhen Alamat a wide berth too after what the fishermen had told us about it, but we got hit by such a severe storm that we were almost shipwrecked next to it and it was only because Topeekos and I have just about got the hang of sailing this thing that we managed to get into port instead of being smashed to bits on the cliffs.

We tried to stay on board ship but even in harbour we thought we needed to get most of us off so the ship could rest a bit more easily at anchor. The villagers were suspiciously welcoming despite the fact that none of them would speak to us. They were in quite a hurry to get us off the ship, but we managed to delay enough to sneak in a fair few weapons and a few of Pengodda’s very useful little pots of trouble under our sodden cloaks. Putera managed to do some of her elaborate pantomime by which we understood that tonight was the holy festival of their deity and they were forbidden to speak until the sun rose the next day. No stranger than some of the weird ideas that the brigade has decided to impose on my goddess I suppose.

The villagers seemed fairly fit and hale, except for some unpleasant skin complaints. They seemed to be eyeing me and Putera up even more than common indecency allows, which was a bit strange because the women without the dry skin thing looked pretty presentable in a sort of rude rustic way. We were going to find out why they were eyeing us up so keenly a bit later on in the night. We’d set watches of course, but the bolt of lightning that destroyed the village hall woke even the snoring Lumpius up. The blast blew the roof off, showering us with burning logs and pitch-covered branches and striking us all quite deaf. Putera, who had been standing near the door, was down and bleeding from her ears. Several others were on the floor grasping their heads or desperately rolling around trying to get the burning pitch off. The jagged bolt had set fire to the remains of the wooden walls and I quickly signed that we had to get out as quickly as possible.

Another flash of lightning- we were surrounded on three sides by pithekos on war kavala dressed in dark grey religious robes. Looming in the darkness behind them was a larger, darker, more sinister shape. Deafened, I could not hear the baying of the hunting orthos but I could feel the roar of the beast in the pit of my stomach and in the bones of my jaw. They had left us an opening but damned if I was going to oblige them by taking it. Two hand signals and we formed up in a square bristling with swordpoints. The blood rage was on them and they fell on us. They fought strongly but without skill, driven forward by the bloodthirsty howls of their god. They still left us the one opening, trying to force us to run so they could hunt us down.

I remembered then that we had heard rumours of the Hunters of the Prey That Speaks- no wonder they themselves refused to talk! Their god was hanging back because none of us had spoken and he couldn’t fulfill his geas. Their divinely-summoned bolt of lightning had worked against them, for none of us wasted breath shouting to deafened colleagues... but it was surely only a matter of seconds before someone was wounded and cried out. I seized the nearest one and Lumpius figured that I must be up to something, because he stepped into my place and defended me whilst I wrestled the wiry young woman to the ground. A sorceror could have made her sing arias but I’m a soldier so I used a method with less finesse- I pricked her right eyeball with the tip of my dagger. There are few soldiers and even fewer peasants in the world will do anything other than babble at you when you do that. I saw the cry for mercy on form on her lips and so I threw myself to the side as something the size of a Kejang closed its black jaws on the woman. It tore her in half, swallowing the upper half and spitting the twitching legs in the mud by my side, spraying me in dark gobs of gore and polluted earth. It reared up and I prayed that its geas was fulfilled. From the surprise in its reptilian eyes as the misty glow flickered around it and it disappeared, I gathered that it was accustomed to continue its hunt after the kill but that my goddess had extended her light touch to drag it back to wherever gods go, the letter of the rites fulfilled.

With the premature disappearance of their god and the demise of one of their own, the hunters lost heart. I was pleased to see that discipline held and no-one chased off into the dark alleyways after them. We held the village square until dawn, ransacked a few houses, torched the place and set to sea. None were killed, but several of us were badly injured and Putera is deaf to this day. And my cloak was ruined.

We sailed on up the coast. The next village we met, Pelabuhen Batu, we treated with considerable caution, but they didn’t try to hunt us or eat or souls or anything (although a few pouches did go missing from inattentive brothers). The village was backed by cliffs surrounding a nice natural harbour, isolating the village from the landward tribes. We pressed on to Pelabuhen Empang, a bigger village with a sturdy sea-wall that extends the smaller natural harbour. The next settlement along the coast was Odgoda, a small market town where the Odgoda tribe and the coastal villages exchanged necessities and a surprising number of luxuries, which could be had for suspiciously low prices. Bent swords and dented breastplates seemed to be surprisingly common in an area at peace, and the suspicious hint of floppy blue silk caps in darkened alleys at the dockside confirmed it.

I warned everyone to be in full parade-ground-we-are-soldiers get up and on no account to flash money or valuables around wishfully thinking that the word might get round at least a few of the pirates that we weren’t worth the trouble. At least our homely old fishing boat didn’t look loaded with loot (even though it was).

Of course, none of that did any good and a few days down the coast we were saw an old but fast galley racing out of a bay with the wind at her back and a nasty bronze kejanghead spike-and-shield at the front. Needless to say we failed to outrun them in the official company naval floating fortress, so we prepared to repel boarders. The pirates around here clearly aren’t locals because their leader, a stupendously ugly woman with a huge canker on her back demanded our surrender in gutter Leekeeo. When I refused, she got out her floppy blue silk cap and tied it on her head, at which signal the rest of her boat did likewise and came roaring towards us. Unfortunately for Captain Hunch, she neglected to duck down behind their prow shield and Indera’s arrow went straight in through her right eye and straight out through the nice floppy blue silk cap, which proceeded to turn a nicer dark purple colour as the woman keeled over backwards (or astern as Lelang keeps telling me to call it. He keeps making comments about "her being broad across the beam" and "having too much sail up forrards" when he thinks I can’t hear which will shortly result in him discovering that even quartermasters have to lend a hand on board ship and that decks need a awful lot of swabbing).

Topeekos managed to dodge the first pass of that enormous kejanghead because they were distracted by their Captain’s spectacular demise. We let loose some semblance of an archery fusillade but of course they were shooting back and their boat was better armoured than ours and was faster too, so we decided to let them ram us. I think they were quite surprised when Lumpius and I led boarding charges right down their throats- I guess they weren’t used to a boat with two dozen crew who all fight like they meant it. Most boats probably only have a few escorts. We swarmed over their ropes and lines and jumped over to their ship before they had really got much of an idea what was going on. They were obviously top dogs because one of the blue silk hats sat on a minor-league sorceror who nearly convinced Obrol that his sword was alive but who rapidly discovered that Lumpius can jump over puny pithekos and get right down to it. He looked remarkably surprised when one of Lumpius’ swords went though his groin, another through his belly, another through his heart and the last one neatly severed his head and sent a spray of blood all over the sails. At about this point the other floppy blue caps seemed to lose heart a bit. A few managed to make it over the side and a fair few got trampled to death trying to. We wiped the rest out because I’ve got no patience with pirates. (T’Heros told me off about that later saying I should have tried to recruit them, but I think that the blue silk will tend to win over the red feathers but what do I know?) I also dumped the ghastly floppy blue silk hats into the sea even though Lumpius wanted to keep his for luck. I made him a stout leather cap out of pirate clothing offcuts instead and made a silver moon and golden amber sun disk as a badge on the front which was much more stylish and he really was starting to get a bit sunburned on the mountaintop of his bald head.

We worked out later from the couple we kept alive to have a little chat with that the ex-wizard and the ex-Captain often used to case boats at Odgoda. When they scried the amber and silver in the hold of our fishing boat they ran around the hut going Yeah Yeah Yeah until they calmed down enough to get the crew together and slip off after us. They passed us in the night and slipped into Teluk Pajar (which is a pirate’s nest in a the bay) for reinforcements. Fortunately for us the most of the other boats were out and there were only a few extra hands to be had.

After our little chat with the pirates we decided to head inland because the pirate lair sounded as though it was probably pretty deserted. We transferred all our stuff across from the valiant company fishing boat which was anyway quite badly holed. When we cut her adrift and disentangled her from the kejanghead she sunk pretty quickly, so it is a good job we hadn’t tried to set fire to the pirates’ boat. I renamed her Penjara which means "plunderer". I did it properly with the olive oil over the name cloth draped over the kejangspike and everything even if it was only a drip or two because we didn’t have much in the galley.

Teluk Pajar wasn’t much trouble- a few camp followers and children who we didn’t trouble much except for stealing a lot of tools and useful nets and things and setting fire to their docks which they probably didn’t appreciate.

On we sailed, past various Rak ruins that we studiously ignored. Settlements seemed few and far between until we rounded the Southern Spike which I called Paku Selatan even though Lelang said he thought the proper nautical term was Tanjung which I have to admit now does sound better. So maybe you’d better alter your map to Tanjung Selatan if you’ve got a copy of the one I drew. We had a few storms and a few blue silk cap moments but Penjara seemed to put off any pirate who actually got close so we didn’t get into any more fights on the voyage.

It was nearly two months between the day we pulled out of Golah Novak to the day we sighted the rising smoke from the chimneys and furnaces of Saham, the southernmost outpost of civilisation on the coast. We had passed a few smaller villages on the coast before rounding the southernmost tip but most of the lands seemed to be sparsely inhabited by nomadic tribes.

Saham was a revelation after so long in the wilderness. They had baths (Golah Novak had drawings for a bath-house). They had master cooks to prepare the most delicate Menerima fish, gift of the goddesses of the city (Golah Novak has roast metakeenos. Again.) They had a cloth market with woven cotton and silk and cured smooth metakeenos yearling hide and tough kedros belly hides and soft Soang-chick down and glistening wasp carapaces cured by masters and the incredible iridescent feathers of King’s Concubine Gundiks collected from the southern jungles and pit-viper skins running from dusky brown through to vivid emerald and polished siput-shell panels for decoration and tiny shells of the jewel-like siput siput for buttons and everything (Golah Novak has a big field that sometimes has a couple of tribesmen camped on it trying to sell matted grass cloaks that fall apart in a few months). Topeekos objected when I went out and bought myself a new outfit because he said we would need all our cash to attract master craftsmen to come to our city. I said that if we tried to persuade any master craftsmen to come to a city where we all dressed in rags stiff with salt and stained yellow with sweat and reeking of fish they’d have to be mad, blind and totally unable to smell anything as well as being dim. So I won that argument.

I arranged for a seamstress called Biaya to make me two new outfits and some of her assistants ran up some decent uniforms for the others. She did an adequate job I suppose but I wouldn’t go back there because she charged me a positively obscene price for the dark blue silks and the belt of sapphires. At least the dark green snakeskin outfit with the gold thread inlays was quite cheap because silver was fetching a good price in the north that year. The others I outfitted in swirling dark silk trousers tied at the waist with a green snakeskin belt and with a cured yearling metakeenos hide jacket with the small spines left on so that the two lines ran down the breastline and made them look a bit tougher, a bit scarier, a bit more mysterious and a whole lot cleaner.

You can’t make an entrance in a place you’ve been shopping in for the last week, so I decided we’d move on to Pembelian and try to find what we needed there. I styled myself Princess Bidadari which means a magical temptress which seemed to set the right tone. The others muttered a bit about being "my faithful honour guards" but I reminded them that we were supposed to be royal guardsmen originally they cheered up.

We sailed into Pembelian harbour in the tail of the morning, when everyone was abroad about their business and the docks were sure to be bustling with unloading the morning tide’s cargo. We had polished the kejanghead prow and inlaid giant Siput-shells in its eyes. I stood atop the kejanghead as a living figurehead and leaped off onto the dock the moment the mooring ropes were thrown. Topeekos nearly dropped me in the harbour by a last minute twist of the wheel but I just managed to get a clean leap and landed fluidly so I don’t think anyone other than Lumpius noticed. Without looking behind me I strode up the dock and past the harbourmaster who was doing a fish impression. I heard the jangle of swords behind me and knew that half my honour guard was at my heels, bearing two open chests stuffed with silver and amber. I had a speech prepared in case any nasty little bureaucrat had tried to stop me but I don’t think the thought even occurred to any of them. I swirled up the dock road accompanied only by the jingle of my honour guard’s sparking swords. The whole city seemed to be rooted to the spot and even the harbour burung comar had stopped their mournful cries although that was probably because the fishermen were looking at me and the fish were momentarily undefended. I got to the top of the harbour hill rise and to the edge of the market before the spell was broken and some fisherman discovered his prized sea-penjaga in the beak of a particularly large and evil-smelling burung comar. He let out an angry shout and the shout flowed out across the docks in a great wave and broke over the market like a surfer’s dream. By the time we reached the Suami’s palace-cathedral news of our arrival had probably reached Merah.

The Suami himself came out to greet us, hurriedly dressed in full regalia with the crown a bit askew. His priests had rolled out a sky-blue silk carpet for him to walk on because he wasn’t allowed to wear shoes. He almost managed to pull off looking dignified but the shirt-tail hanging out was just a touch too much. He actually bowed to me before I was introduced and I decided that I would bow back, partially because it seemed polite but mostly so he could get a good look down my cleavage. It never hurts in diplomacy to get them distracted. I gave him the second prepared speech about the fame of Pembelian spreading to our own far kingdom and bringing gifts of good will and embassage but his attention was fixed elsewhere until a woman with a nose like a chisel blade and a puckered mouth thumped his toes with the butt of her wooden staff. She was looking at me like I’d just been scraped off the underside of a boat hull until I presented them with the chests of loot at which point she stopped looking like a lemon and started to look more like a shark. I guessed that she was the Suami’s ritual wife, the high priestess of Denome, but couldn’t work out which one of them really held the reins. This was clearly going to take a while.

The Suami, whose name I eventually discovered was Tertawa Gelak-Gelak, was a tall bald man with a melancholy air and sad eyes. I guessed him to be in his late forties. One would have thought that anyone with such a sorrowful face would hardly be the roistering life and soul of the party, but nothing could have been further from the truth- Tertawa lived to party and his great booming laughs rattled the doors for miles around. His ritual wife, on the other hand, was as sour of disposition as of demeanour. I don’t think Denome forbids her priestesses to have a good time but Buritan seemed to regard anyone having a little bit of innocent fun as a threat to the very foundations of her church. Needless to say she was less than pleased when she discovered Tertawa chasing me around the apple orchard. Tertawa took his scolding like a naughty schoolboy but spoiled the effect by pinching my bottom when Buritan turned her voice to tearing my skin off.

I was glad to learn that Tertawa was riding high in popularity and hence in power amongst the trader nobles of Pembelian, the outlander wars having been won the previous year and the tribes kicked so far back from the frontiers that the kingdom had had to expand to take up the slack. This left the church to ride in the nobles’ wake, for no-one needs priests when the trading is rich and the harvest is good. So it turned out that wooing Tertawa was much more sensible than appeasing Buritan, which was fortunate as I don’t think I’d have had much fun sucking lemons and praying all day.

When he wasn’t chasing me around the apple trees, Tertawa was quite a shrewd negotiator. He seemed to be taking a long view and expressed interest in contracting a trading partnership with us rather than just supplying us with a few ships. Since Pembelian lived and died on its trade and since the tin coming out of Merah wasn’t in quite such great demand as of old, the merchant princes were looking for new markets and new cargoes for their ships. I played a cagey game because the first rule of trading is that the buyers and sellers pay for traders’ palaces. Unknown to Tertawa I was also wheedling my way around the shipwrights and with judicious members of the company entered incognito into the servants’ quarters managed to find a couple of up-and-coming journeymen who seemed disaffected with their lot. The best of them was Samudera, a sunset-haired slip of a girl with a temper than could strip paint at twenty paces. Her accession to the master’s chair was being blocked by a cabal of older masters who were dismayed at her disrespect for traditional dry-dock methods and her step-father who had wanted her to join the church and was determined to make her life difficult because of her disobedience. Rumour was that Tertawa himself had his eye on Samudera and that had I not come along he might have chased her around the apple trees in exchange for ensuring she got her master’s chair. It seemed that I had stomped that particular apple into mush by my sudden appearance, which was probably going to be awkward. Better to face trouble than hide it, so I went to see her one evening as the sun was just setting on a spectacularly hot day. I had arranged to have Putera bring her to the meeting as she looks deceptively like a blushing virgin bride and unlikely to hurt anyone (or steal their man). I arrived fashionably late to see our deafened trooper and Pembelian’s argumentative firestorm in a passionate embrace and I guessed that we’d got our shipwright.

The ships proved considerably more difficult because Tertawa didn’t want to let go of any of his fastest merchant ships and was positively not going to let me even set my eyes on anything military. Still, a few more games in the orchard and a liberal disbursement of silver and amber acquired us two elderly but very well constructed merchantmen with recurved prows and a single square-rigged sail. Unfashionable but serviceable, which even I have to admit is more important in a ship since it doesn’t do you much good to be at the height of fashion if there’s so much water sloshing about that the leather of your sea chest gets soaked and all your nice outfits get black stained and mildewed. Of course, with only two dozen of us we were going to be a bit short-handed so Tertawa kindly offered us sailors to help crew them. I suppose he thought he was being very clever, getting free spies to go home with us, but I guess he didn’t know that we’d bribed the bureaucrat to pick men that our new shipwright knew had a grudge against the nobles. As far as I know not one of the fifteen men who came with us ever sent so much as a "Hello Mother" note back to Pembelian (indeed most of them ended up joining the company). We held another little ceremony to rename our new ships. Putera named one the Tuli Benar, which means stone deaf, because the figurehead looks a bit like her; the other one we let Samudera rename and she called it Bermata Satu which means one-eyed but you don’t want to know why.

So as we sailed out of Pembelian just after dawn one bright day at the end of summer, I thought I’d done quite a good job on my first command. The one thing we hadn’t had too much luck with was acquiring slaves for despite last year’s war with the tribes there weren’t many on the market. We’d picked up a few dozen by private trading but I’d decided not to broach the subject with the nobles as I didn’t want them to get the idea we were short of people at Golah Novak in case they decided to sail their war-fleet up the Sungai Jalan... although that had given me an idea that I thought would be useful later. So we returned to the city in some semblance of triumph, with three good ships, a master shipwright, a handful of slaves and much lighter coffers. The one thing that really did concern me was the way that the brothers and sisters who had been on the mission seemed to be treating me like a lucky charm, mascot and saint. They even wanted to keep wearing the uniforms when we got back to Golah Novak, which I thought was a very dangerous precedent- so I let them, then made sure that all the other company members got issued with one the next morning. I think that got through to most of my little band, and we adopted it as our new company uniform, changing only the green snakeskin belts for metakeenos leather dyed blood red and adding a soft leather cap with three red-brown Penangkap Ikan tailfeathers for tradition’s sake. And because it rains quite a lot in the autumn in Golah Novak and you need a good hat or it ruins your hairdo.

It is a few months since I wrote my last entry because nothing very exciting happened for a while. I have been stuck in and around the city gathering the materials that Samudera needs to start building ships. Samudera herself has been busy in basic training and doing her three missions, which have been boring ones sitting outside Rumah throwing the odd spear every time one of them tries to get to their fields. Vika has been in charge of besieging them and she seems to have done a great job- it doesn’t take all that much imagination to stop anyone getting out of a small fortified village after all. Of course, they are showing no signs of giving up and their goddess can probably provide them with food and water between now and when Vika dies of old age (although she’s not very likely to die of that- I think it’ll be from an infected spear, if you know what I mean).

At least we have finally got rid of most of this "Cult of Aurora" nonsense. I think the Captain is beginning to see what Lunak and I have been telling him for months, that we don’t need all these boring rituals and getting up at dawn and praying and sacrificing. So we’ve abandoned the "seven stages of initiation" which means Aurora doesn’t have to sneak around in a dark cloak hiding her face playing peekaboo with peasants any more.

Even better, the Captain has seen that the Standard-bearer was a hideous scar on the brigade and called a vote of the company to get rid of it. No-one voted to keep it, especially when Stutter managed an impassioned speech against the idea. So now he’s the Enviable Chaplain, but he still doesn’t seem comfortable. He’s been sort-of ducking his orders from the Captain about to try to convert Rumah by trying to convert lots of the Kelana instead, and without really trying Lunak has been doing much the same for the local Damai who seem to have jumped at the chance to get a militant protective goddess on their side for a change. Quite why they need a militant protective goddess at all is an interesting problem which Stutter and I are working on in our spare time. We think there is some sort of periodic migration or invasion from the mountains but they are very coy about discussing it.

I suggested offering the local tribes our citizenship but was shouted down which I don’t really understand. Alright, so they are nomads at the moment but if we want a free army and people who might want to settle down when they discover that farming means you don’t go hungry for three months of the year I think they’d be good. So I’m cheating by trying to recruit as many as I can when I'm off on these expeditions. I think they’ll be much better friends than slaves ever will, but what do I know?

Anyway, I think I can see beyond the harbour at last because T’Heros is going to send me out on another sailing expedition in Penjara and Tuli Benar, this time to start a mass migration of credulous farmers seeking their fortune in amber and silver. The idea is that they come, discover that panning for amber is harder work than farming, and settle down. Dim farmers should be pretty easy to find. I am a bit wary of going back to Pembelian so soon even though word of our marvellous treasure will be all over the kingdom. I have a nasty feeling that we might just get locked up if we’re not careful. Careful means generous, so we’ve loaded up with more chests of loot, and a big tank full of the littlest sort of Kotac (which they didn’t seem to have in Pembelian) and they do taste good. Their shells polish up well too, kind of like marble only not so heavy. I’ve got a new outfit where the breastplate is made out of plates of polished Kotac, the ones with dark blue ground with lighter blue veins and sutures in it. I’ve had to reuse my old black silk skirts to go with it but I’ve re-cut them to be looser which I think will be more fashionable this time of year.

As it happened I was right to be nervous about Pembelian. I sent a couple of brothers in to scout the place out quietly and got the distinct impression that they were unhappy at being swindled last time, so we gave it a miss and went on to Cantik, which hasn’t improved much. Nothing interesting happened and we went for a softly-softly approach which got us two boatloads of slaves from upriver (some tribes had been uppity recently), a bunch of credulous farmers and an extra ship which was pretty ancient but serviceable. (I’m getting fed up of serviceable, I want stylish, fashionable, elegant, opulent, decadent!). The lord of Cantik is a lady and a very stuck-up one at that so needless to say we didn’t get on. Had a bit more luck when we went upriver to Safir (and I got hold of some nice sapphire ear-rings) but it all fell through when his wife found out.

That took a long time to get sorted out and drained our silver and amber reserves almost completely. We let some of the newcomers go off and prospect for amber for a reasonable tax, and we charge them a bit more if they want protection from the fort we set up called, imaginatively, Benteng Ambar (which means Amber Fort, amazingly). The easiest stuff from the banks of the Sungai Jalan have been picked now although the spring meltwater washes more down each year. Most of the best hunting is in the small tributary streams in the forests, so the more financially astute members of the company have set up a consortium with the Damai to help look for it without getting crushed by Kejang. There are quite a lot of Kejang in the forest, much to the Captain’s delight: his idea of using them as mobile siege machines seems to be working out quite well. We’ve got a dozen or so now, not fully grown but already quite impressive when they charge in formation. They aren’t exactly easy to train- in fact, we think a touch of sorcery would probably be useful to keep them under control on the battlefield- but if used carefully they could be devastating.

Now I’ve been sent off to establish some regular silver mines since we have a few new recruits who know which end of a mining chisel you hit the rock with. Rasa is coming with me which is good, he’ll make sure that at least my bedroom is warm and all the gaps between the tree-trunks will be properly chinked with moss for the winter.

It is the depths of midwinter in year two. I’ve been busy for a while so I haven’t written anything in my diary. Rasa, the lads and me have established a fort for the silver mines up in the mountains which against my better judgement is called Benteng Perak. See if you can guess what it means. We had a good autumn this year with plenty of food and a lot of apples to make Kemes apple brandy with (Jahac knows the recipe thankfully- I don’t think anyone down in the city knows it so they’re going to be livid when we get back in spring and tell them what we’ve been drinking all winter). Jahac finally got let off bodyguard duty this year, some newer recruits have had to take in on. We’ve managed to keep our recruitment going quite well, most of the people who come and settle have wanted to join up so we’re up at about three hundred which is the most ever I think. Anyway, we’ve pretty much decided to dig in for the winter here. We have plenty of food and drink, we can get to the mines and we have a nice safe and more importantly warm fort to stay in.

We got back to the city when the snows melted and upper reaches of the river thawed. We had a few interesting tussles and thefts over the winter which we’ve managed to track down to Yilani incursions- amazing that they can move about in that cold but I guess they’re not really lizards even though they look like it. Our friendly Damai recruits (you really need some Pagoth up here in the mountains over winter) say that the Yilani occasionally come down out of the mountains to raid but don’t seem to have any intentions to invade or anything. I sent some scouts out to find more: they said that there is a decaying Rak city up in the mountains to the North. Looks like the Yilani use it as a base but not many of them live there; probably the main body is off where the demon armies from Kemuliaan got their food from. We’re going to have to deal with them eventually but right now there doesn’t seem to be much point in stepping in the viper’s pit for the sake of it.

When we got back in the spring we had a great to-do about a certain curse and your favourite lady chronicler. I won’t spoil the secret; someone else might enlighten you.

I also survived my first assassination attempt when some scum from Pembelian decided to stick a dagger in my back. Turns out he and a couple of friends slipped into the city at spring with the Kelana at the first trade fair. We think his mates have had it away back to Pembelian which was bound to happen sooner or later. What no-one quite understands is why they left one behind to have a go at me. I’m no the wiser but I do note that it was only a week or so after we did the curse dance, which raises some disturbing questions.

The city is beginning to look like a small town now. We have stone working and clay firing for wall-blocks and roof tiles. Most of the original brothers have a shack on their plot of land; a few have a proper house. We have a sewerage system (hooray) but no hot baths (bah). Pengodda has his hospital and Lunak has his temple which is at least not garishly coloured but which could do with a bit more refinement and a bit less rude rural charm. We’ve got something defensible on the prow of the hill but the walls are still a bit of a joke; guess who has to go off and get some more labour to finish them?

One funny thing that happened was that Pengodda was experimenting with flash-pots (rather than the more usual flesh-pots) and blew the roof off his lab. T’Heros was furious and banished all experiments to the other side of the river, so Pengodda had to stump up a large wodge of cash to Rapeezo to get a choice plot at a safe distance from the rest of us. Old Grumpy was ever so smug about this (he doesn’t get on too well with our good doctor, I suspect because Old Grumpy can’t bear to admit that anyone might know more about anything scientific than he does) and was insufferable for a whole day until the Captain wisely announced a total ban on sorcerous investigations and the construction of experimental siege gadgetry within a mile of the city. So Old Grumpy had to crowbar open his money pouch and stump up for a choice plot next door to Pengodda’s! You could hear his teeth grinding all the way from the citadel! Who says the Captain doesn’t have a sense of humour?

The big campaign for this year is going to be the reduction of Rumah. As I predicted, mother Induk has managed to keep up the supply of wine and heavenly stew despite Vika’s two year blockade. Old Grumpy’s master plan for this spring was to dam the river then let the whole lot out in one go and sweep the whole fortress off into the sea. Nice idea; they got a lot of digging done in nearly frozen ground to block the river before the swells of the meltwater and managed to raise the level of the lake and flood the swamps on the Sungai Jalan Induk which is no bad thing although the Damai were very upset because it stopped the spring Melampung mushroom crop which they were very very annoyed about. Lunak says it is because they use them as drugs for their rites of adulthood and because they didn’t have any Melampung no children could become adults. I don’t think the others realised just how close to war with our neighbours we were at that point- that it was averted was solely due to Putera’s finding a particularly rich crop where we had dredged the Sungai Lohor the year before.

I think Putera should be made an officer as soon as possible but the others all think a deaf person is no good in a battle. I think Putera listens to people much better than most of our current officers myself, but what do I know? We don’t want to lose Putera because if she goes so does Samudera and anyway Putera is great. Besides, she and Samudera have got taste- we have been having a friendly "most impressive dress" contest all year. I think I’m ahead on points because I got hold of some southern snakeskins for gloves which matched the colour of those Safir ear-rings exactly- my serpent queen outfit was a real hit at the festival of Ohros the Pale, even if I did have to agree to have my head ceremonially struck off at the end (I had to throw the silk scarf away- I couldn’t get rid of the metakeenos blood-stains).

Anyway, back to the flood. We’d got it all set up and Old Grumpy had rigged it so that the Captain could pull a lever and unleash the flood, which he did. (I wonder why Grumpy didn’t do it himself? That’s a rhetorical question, for those of you with a proper grammaticus education). Off went the waters, roaring and foaming and full of mud and logs and probably Melampung mushrooms as well for all I know. Half the brigade was stationed on high ground near Rumah to do mopping up operations after the destruction, and Vika’s cordon had slipped away overnight. Which all meant they got a grandstand view as the waters rushed down the channel and enveloped Rumah in a muddy river of death. Only to be diverted as the goddess Induk manifested herself to defend her people and turned the waters aside, so the flood flowed harmlessly into the sea. She was mightily enraged, by all accounts, and T’Heros and Old Grumpy had to beg Aurora to manifest to sort things out. Sensibly, she restricted herself to diverting Induk’s wrath so we decided to call that one a draw. So Vika got to go back to besieging them again.

While all this was going on, I had taken Putera and a couple of brothers on a scouting mission down south. We mapped out most of the Peninsula over the course of a few months (it is called the Pembajak Peninsula apparently). We were happy to find that there weren’t too many hostile surprises- a few pirate encampments and a few Kemes fishing villages on the coast, the odd ruin in the mountains and some very impressive volcanos. What was most interesting was that Pengodda had told us a very clever method for working out our latitude and we discovered that the southern tip of the peninsula is on the same latitude as the twin cities and we worked out that Golah Novak was actually closer to Kadra and the kingdom of Ohia the Viper than it is to Pembelian. The turbulence in the channel looked bad but not impossible, and so long as the volcanos refrain from throwing red-hot rocks on your head it should be a navigable route.

The Captain was delighted to hear all that when we got back after we had sat through the standard "naughty girl" lecture about going off on our own. I wonder what executive responsibility actually means? It clearly doesn’t mean deciding something needs doing and doing it because I always get in trouble about that- the Captain keeps reminding me about nicking Penggoda’s pot at Kemuliaan. The fact that we’d all have died if I hadn’t doesn’t seem to hold much water somehow. Anyway, I was sent off to open a trade route south loaded with more silver and amber. I took my regular sized unit of two dozen brothers (carefully taking most ones who hadn’t been with me before, apart from the ones couldn’t have done without like Lelang and Topeekos).

Having read my illustrious predecessor’s words about Ohia’s kingdom, we stole in very quietly under cover of night and moored in a remote bay before going into Kadra in dribs and drabs. Kadra has a very impressive harbour and a huge stone lighthouse which you can see from miles and miles away. Its architecture tends to the massive stone monuments, which looks very impressive except for all the snakes (and they are a bit drafty when the wind gets up). The people are snakes too, unfortunately, and the local idea of a party is to strip down to loincloths, oil yourself and writhe around on the floor with all the others. This is very undignified and there are all sorts of fluids other than oil to beware of, so I didn’t join very many of these. (Putera seemed to enjoy it, oddly enough). We managed to get a decent line on a few local merchants and some subtle dirt-digging provided leverage, especially when I managed to find a few worshippers of Spatlos the Extravagant and have a real party. They know all sorts of interesting tidbits and Lelang made very good use of what I found out. Of course I hasten to point out that all this partying with the Spatlos crowd was purely for business purposes (and Putera claims the oil-writhing was the same).

With a lot of back-room dealing with some very unpleasant Svika merchants and lower-echelon priests, we left the south with the ships fully loaded with slaves. They all seemed very pleased to be going away, although they all muttered and moaned about the weather all the way to Golah Novak, at which point they switched to moaning about the city instead which I can certainly understand. We had had a pretty rough passage on the way back as well which didn’t help.

When we got back we discovered that the last thing Golah Novak really needed at that point was another hundred or so mouths to feed at the state’s expense. The crops had been blighted by a combination of an unusually dry summer and an infestation of beetles, so we were looking at a pretty thin winter. We sent the ships straight back out to try to buy some food, but we had to send them to Pembelian which probably wasn’t sensible in retrospect.

Not long after the boats sailed, we received an embassage from Pembelian. Panic stations as we really didn’t want them to find out too much about just how badly defended (and hungry) Golah Novak was. Rapeezo, Lelang and I managed to do a real flimflam job on the ambassadors and with some hasty construction by Rasa and the new slaves we managed to fool them into thinking we had about three times as many people and about a hundred times more money than we really had. I couldn’t do too much about the taste in which their apartments were furnished but they were undeniably not those of an impoverished state. We counted the ornaments after they left- the thieving sods had slipped about a dozen amber carvings under their robes. Exactly how they got the full-sized statue of Denome out of the apartments without being noticed I don’t want to know.

Well, the boats did arrive with some decent food which tided us over the winter but we were all pretty thin by the spring (some of needed to lose a bit of weight of course). Still, we had made some progress on the city. As we’d had to stop the heavy engineering because we couldn’t eat enough to sustain it, we’d ended up doing a lot of work on the internals and the place was beginning to look much more elegant. Rasa is a nice boy but he doesn’t really have any idea of what should go into a palace- understatement has passed him by, it is a bit like a Kemes’ dress sense. Still, since I was stuck in the city over the winter I managed to get my house centrally heated and have a real proper hot bath installed and everything.

In the spring we had another retirement- Sheeda had finally got fed up of training clods and never being allowed out on missions and had quit. She took up residence in Vreeo’s pub and was soon running the place, since Vreeo is really getting frail now. It turns out that Sheeda is a fabulous cook (although not much of a brewer) and so the pub has moved into catering. (Vreeo’s idea of an evening meal at the pub was some salted black bread to soak in your beer). Harapse keeps asking me if she can go on a mission and I think Vreeo knows it because she asked me to take her next time I go out, though I’m sure Harapse is too polite to have mentioned anything about it to Vreeo. I don’t feel so bad now that she’s got Sheeda for company so I’m going to take her south soon.

Obviously, Lumpius was immediately "promoted" to Swordmaster Politicos, which he was not very happy with either but agreed to do once T’Heros promised him a month a year off to go to the Pasar games if brigade matters didn’t get in the way. (My suggestion by the way- I thought Lumpius trouncing the local heroes every so often would probably be a good move for recruitment purposes.)

That left us in need of an Enviable Swordmaster- Lumpius’ suggestion was Plesacica, a quiet Kemes who has been with us since Pasar but whose name hardly anyone knew. Vika objected that her voice was too quiet, but then Plesacica removed Vika’s sword from her hand, cut the straps on her armour and her trousers and had it back in Vika’s scabbard before her trousers fell down, everyone was happy (except Vika).

I was just getting ready for a trade mission when the Captain and Stutter came to see me. T’Heros told me that they were very worried about Rumah because they couldn’t find any way of getting rid of it. Last year’s flood plan had been an unmitigated disaster and Lunak had said that he thought one reason our crops were so poor last year was that Induk was getting her own back. Stutter had been trying to find a way to turn their goddess and had failed totally. T’Heros said we needed a much more drastic solution. (I told him that he still had a few things backwards with the goddesses but I don’t think he really understood me).

They had a few more ideas but they were very drastic and would need a bigger military machine than we currently had available. The Captain wanted to be able to concentrate on fortifying the city this year after last year’s visitations from Pembelian. My Damai friends had found a few spies in the forest as well, they were currently cooling their heels in Benteng Ambar. So the Captain told me to deal with Rumah. Great.

After a bit of tentative testing of the waters, I did manage to extract a promise from the Captain that I really was in charge of dealing with the Rumah problem however I chose to, and that it didn’t absolutely have to be done right away but that it was my top priority and I could have anyone I needed except the Politicos officers.

Right then. Square the shoulders, put on my thinking outfit (it came from Merah and is a nice diaphanous green and gold thing that’s very soft on the skin but can only be worn inside a nice centrally heated house because it is pretty thin). Put head together with Putera, Setrika, Samudera and Plesacica (Rapeezo called it the girly boozy night in). Decide not to tell anyone else what we were up to.

I set off for Kadra with a lightly-armed two dozen, Penjara and Tuli Benar and Lelang in tow and Harapse in pride of place under the kejangspike on Penjara. Samudera and Putera slipped off when the Captain was otherwise occupied (Setrika got a real bollocking for letting them go by the way), taking another dozen and the pride of our fleet, the newly-commissioned Jentera (which means "the wheel" because its main use was Kotac fishing and for another reason which I’m not going to let you in on) which Samudera had launched. Jentera was a real warship, sleek and slender and really purposeful. I said Samudera had taste.

This time I did the full Princess Bidadari business when we hit Kadra, showered the priests with riches, publicly loaded Tuli Benar with slaves and disdained to have so much as an audience with the high priest (who probably didn’t realise that he’d been wriggling in an oil bath with me only the previous year as I changed my look completely from last time). I think Harapse really enjoyed me being rude to the high priest. Then we sailed off down the coast to do a repeat performance at Theelia and Zaketa, buying a boat to take all the slaves back at each of those places. We managed to build the gossip to fever pitch before I let Lelang off the leash. He makes a very convincing traitor, by the way. They "managed" to buy him with various exotic potions and repulsive perversions and he accidentally let slip all sorts of information in the throes of ecstasy. We even managed to get the timing about right, fleeing the day after midsummer’s after a particularly public Spatlos boogie party (as Thracie would have put it). I figured it would take them a month or two for greed to overcome the natural inertia of the bureaucracy and the priests. I was also counting on that inertia to ensure that the slaves we had obtained were pretty clean- I didn’t think they’d had enough time to arrange any spies.

Meanwhile, in Pembelian, Samudera and Putera were being really obnoxious, to the point where the chiselled prune even tried to have them thrown out of the city. (A particularly lewd midnight romp on the high altar of Denome probably didn’t help). They were showering the silver and amber around and generally getting the city whipped up into a frenzy. The day after midsummer’s they finally had to flee after performing the wrong set of rites for Krenee’s summer festival. (You know, the quiet one. They substituted the friskier spring rites). So they had to flee post-haste, maybe a little ahead of schedule but I knew Pembelian wasn’t really on a war footing just now.

The first moon of autumn saw us with several shiploads of new slaves, decent fortifications, a good military stockpile, plenty of food and supplies laid in, and two navies converging on this mysterious city where the walls were garnished in amber and the streets were paved with silver. Fortunately, the priests’ greed had proved much stronger than the bureaucrats’ inertia and the great armada immediately laid siege to this great fortress of Golah Novak, which they knew from their inside man lay just at the mouth of the Sungai Jalan Induk. I’m sure the poor inhabitants of Rumah wondered which gods they’d managed to offend this time by the mere fact of their existence. Still, they were used to sieges. Unfortunately for them, the priests of Ohia are much more bloodcurdling than Vika and company, and they soon found that most of the "rocks" lobbed in by the catapults on the ships were bundles of snakes and disease-ridden corpses brought up from the south in lead boxes especially for the purpose. Things were going to be tough for Rumah, and this time they had a real great-grandmother of a goddess opposing them.

The Captain thought this was my plan, which was good as he was supposed to. I think he was surprised when Jentera slipped up the Sungai Lohor one night. The work party Setrika had slipped out there had kept their mouths shut and only the five of us knew that the channel was now deep enough for Jentera to sail right up to the lake. I think I really managed to surprise him when the Pembelian war fleet rolled up in Teluk Pengasingan two days later.

They say that the sea in the bay turned red that day. Neither navy knew what the other was doing there, but both admirals were damned determined that no other fleet was going to get their hands on the city of silver and amber. Rumah was caught in the middle of a heavy-duty firefight complete with flaming cups of naptha hurled at opposing warships and the gods stalking the bay. I don’t think Induk had really messed with the big boys recently and the iridescent rainbow shield she threw over the town walls soon had gaping holes where Ohia’s servant the cobra-lord kept spitting torrents of venom. Loyismos and Denome were doing their fair share, throwing burning iron spears the size of battleships and cloaking the priests in silken veils of armour which reflected the venoms of Ohia back at the opposition.

We were sitting up the hill with about three quarters of the brigade watching this. At least, I say we- to be more accurate, Setrika and the brigade were. The other politicos were back at the city in case our clever plan took an unexpected heave to port. Putera, Lunak and I were hiding in an upside-down dug-out canoe at the river’s mouth having a good pray for one reason and another but principally that the cobra venom that kept splashing on the wooden canoe bottom wouldn’t eat through. When the battle seemed to be as fierce as it was going to get, I slipped off towards Denome, Putera slipped off towards Ohia and Lunak slipped across to one of the gaps in Induk’s shield and grew himself over the walls of Rumah.

Goddesses are great and powerful and mystical entities, but they can still get distracted, especially if there are hundreds of their most faithful fanatic worshippers screaming their name as they charge into battle. So distracted in fact that they don’t notice if you sidle up behind them, very quietly and all invisible (thanks, Kanela!) and walking on tippy-toes and nick their nice pearl necklace. Ohia didn’t seem to notice the loss of a single jewelled scale, either. Putera and I swam for it and had just reached Rumah’s walls when our respective divine victims noticed the thefts. All eyes turned to Rumah’s walls.

On which Aurora was standing, arms linked with Induk. Iridescence turned to blinding light as the enraged gods and their followers threw everything they had at the little town. For five minutes the air itself was crawling and alive with monsters and serpents and flaming tongues trying to force their way in to the light. Then Lunak spoke.

"You came here to steal and rob, to own that which we have and to take that which is ours. Yours is the power of millennia, and yet a child and an tired old woman hold you at bay. Until this day, the child and the old, old woman trusted no-one and fought to exhaustion to exclude outsiders. Today, they join together and share and are made strong."

(We coached him on the speech in case you wonder why it has a bit more zing! than his usual sermons).

"You have a choice. You may continue along the path your greed has chosen for you, or you may choose to join and share and be made stronger. I hold here a token stolen from each of you."(He held up the pearls and the scale.

"If you choose the path of war, take back your token... and to hell with you. If you choose the path of trade, take this world-gem, dawn-gem in fair exchange and be welcome in our homes." (That bit was Samudera’s in case you hadn’t guessed).He held up to polished amber spheres, lit from within with Aurora’s spark and covered by a shifting, shining iridescent protective veil..

Ohia roared, reared, plucked her scale from Lunak’s hand.

Loyismos and Denome reached out their hands to take the pearls... but a slim, tanned arm reached out from Denome’s shadow and took an amber globe. The two gods shrieked like fishwives and rounded on the corn-golden figure behind them.

"The choice was not yours!" screeched Denome.

"These infidels have tricked me AGAIN!" screamed Loyismos.

"The pearls were MINE!"

"They destroyed my monastery!"

A fourth figure rose pale and translucent from the river, her face veiled in a waterfall’s spray. She lifted her veil and kissed Aurora’s hand gently, then took the second globe from her. She linked arms with her sister and rounded on the maniacal ranting duo before them.

"My sister has chosen for our people," said Kreenee of the Fountain. "You may join us, or you may go your own way."

"YOUR people? MY people will damned well go MY own way!" shouted Loyismos.

"Give me back my necklace!" said Denome.

"Will you not listen to reason?" asked Kreenee. Loyismos and Denome just cursed. Kreenee sighed.

"I had hoped it would not come to this."

Kretharee spoke for the first time, her voice as quiet as the whispering breeze amongst the waving corn.

"Then we must withdraw our blessing and you will shrivel and burn and starve and wither and die."

Loyismos made a sort of strangled frog noise and Denome just sort of wilted. It is all very well being a great warrior and mother and father and builder of cities, but if your rivers dry up and your corn turns to dust in the fields it doesn’t do you much good. They acquiesced (although far from gracefully).

Meanwhile, Ohia had decided that the battle was finished but that the war had just begun and had slipped south out of the bay at the head of her armada. Lelang had managed to slip into the water at the start of the battle and had made his way to shore safe and sound, if a bit cross-eyed from all the potions they kept feeding him. Apparently Ohia was a bit displeased with her priests for getting her into this because she bit the heads off the top dozen as soon as the ships were under way.

I can’t tell how angry the Captain is with me. I thought I’d get a stiff talking to (and had the speech reminding him that he said I could do whatever I thought it would take all ready) but he just looks at me like I’m a ghost or something. I’d almost think he’s scared of me but that would be silly.

Maybe he’s not happy at the amount of gambling I did this time around- but he’s never quite got the hang of playing card games when you’ve got Aurora as the dealer (why does he THINK he glows when he needs the luck?). It wasn’t even me who did all the really fast talking- that was all down to Lunak. Never send a soldier to do a tree’s job, that’s what I say. (See, Topeekos, I can delegate after all!) Old Grumpy was pretty grumpy because of the toothache so it was a bit difficult to tell what he thought of it all. Rapeezo was white as a sheet and said in a sort of stage whisper that next time we had a girly boozy night in he’d have spies in every cushion and hiding in the central heating ducts and behind every bookcase. I guess it was a pretty female-dominated event but that’s just coincidence. Harapse said that she thought it was very clever, which is flattering because if a millennia-year-old demon in a skull thinks you are clever it is probably true.

Rapeezo and Lelang set to on trade treaties with the Suami who was in suprisingly expansive good humour considering. (We later found out that Buritan chisel-face had leapt aboard Ohia’s flagship foaming with religious frenzy and had promptly been squashed flat by the Cobra-lord, which probably explains the Suami’s good mood). Trade treaties seem to take an amazing amount of time to sign.

Penggoda wanted to know what had happened to the pearl necklace (I think he was itching to start cracking them open) and he was very disappointed when I told him that Aurora had placed them about her neck before fading away with the setting sun. Harapse said that bit was particularly clever but I’ve been insufferably smug for the last few pages so I won’t explain.

I was shocked at how frail Vreeo looked when I got back to the city. She is all sticks and angles and her skin is really thin and she didn’t shed last year. She was really happy that Harapse had come back and had lots of exciting tales of derring-do to tell her.

I think that Vreeo was really just waiting for her friend to come back and tell her all about these last adventures. Vreeo died last night, peacefully in bed with a big smile because the pub had done its best night of business ever that evening. Sheeda was a bit surprised that she didn’t appear at breakfast and got quite worried by lunch but twenty years of field campaigns teach you that you NEVER try to wake up a sorceror unless the world is crashing down about your ears. It was only when I brought Harapse back around that evening that we discovered that Vreeo had passed away in her bed, with a victorious little smile on her face.

Kanela and T’Heros carried her body all the way up the hill and along to the temple with all the brigade following and we prayed as we lit her pyre (because Harapse said that’s what Vreeo wanted). I spoilt my green dress because I cried too much.

It is the middle of year five and we’ve just come down the hill from another officer’s funeral. We are lucky it wasn’t more.

Setrika was killed by a Berdevo assassin in the midst of a skirmish at Benteng Perak. She’d taken a detachment upriver to answer desperate calls for help from the miners and the guards at the fort because the Yilani had arrived in force to try to take over. The Berdevo assassin was a southerner who we think had slipped ashore during the battle at Rumah. T’Heros narrowly avoided suffering the same fate that day because Lumpius noticed a glint of light off the Berdevo triangular throwing dagger and managed to cut it out of the air. We’re going to have to tighten up around here.

Apotek is the new Lieutenant Politicos (fortunately it wasn’t me) and Prijekor has taken over as Sergeant Politicos, which is more of a job now that there are some actual people in the place. Prijekor is a Kemes and he has an amazingly loud voice and lots of really imaginative punishments for slackers. Unfortunately his voice is very, very high as well (it is much higher than mine). People who joke about Prijekor being more of a woman than me quickly find out that digging latrines is a relaxing pastime compared with mucking out the Kejang and that the sergeant politicos has ears in every wall of the taverns. They also find out that the enviable lieutenant knows a thing or two about shit assignments as well.

We have a few captured southern soldiers as slaves (we killed absolutely all the priests and most of the officers). They work hard and only grumble about the weather and most of them have taken to worshipping Aurora, although I think we lost a few potential worshippers when they found about the dawn prayer business. At first they thought it would get them an easy life but they soon discovered that we all work hard or we all get a tearing off from the nearest officer (even me, although I think designing a new uniform for our navy IS work but what do I know?) All the rules that we worked out to do with slaves are actually needed now because we want to make sure these southerners stay here. For a start they are trained and disciplined, even if not in brigade style. For a second thing, it never hurts to have men on your side who know at firsthand what the opposition’s field doctrine is.

I was getting ready to head off up to the forts to deal with these Yilani incursions but the Captain has decided to deal with it himself. He probably needs to get out more anyway and I’m sure he’ll be able to deal with it. Before he left we had an officers’ meeting. Apotek is in charge of the city, of course, and everyone else is busy, but I didn’t have any pressing business. So the Captain told me to use my initiative. I think he regretted it the moment the words left his mouth, but I can do whatever I think needs doing for the next few months. In fact I think he’ll find my plans relievingly dull. I’m going around to talk to all the local tribes and find out as much as I can about them.

I’m not looking forward to talking to the Kelana much. They are a pretty boorish lot, even for kavala riders, and they have an unpleasant society where the men are the lazy seleekos hunters while the women do all the hard work. They tend to treat me like some sort of talking metakeenos, which I do not appreciate. So I am going in full "Saint Dreamy" military get-up because they’ve all heard the stories from the Annals now and maybe it will make some of them think. I full expect to have to knock seven or eight of them unconscious before they will listen to me seriously, and even then they will probably look at me like a talking metakeenos trained to do bullfighting.

I think the trip to the Pemburu will be much more profitable. For a start, they have a huge appetite for Jahac’s apple Inje, and they are good fishermen so I will probably be able to get lots of pearls, oyster shells and siput siput from them. For a second thing, they catch Kotac and Sea Penjaga which they serve at big feasts. To encourage them to have a feast for me, Lumpius is coming with me and we’re going to try to make some local games like the ones at Pasar. I am getting quite good at the rope balance (I can beat Lumpius seven times out of ten!) but he still trounces me at spearthrowing, arm wrestling, juggling and coracle rowing. But coracle rowing is a stupid sport if you ask me (or Samudera for that matter). Keels were invented for a reason, and good rowing boats don’t spoil your outfit by tossing you in the water every five minutes.

But most of all I am looking forward to visiting the Damai. I don’t really know why, except that Okretan and Kita and Miran and Prilikia and the others are my friends and lime trees know all sorts of interesting things and some of the Horevo trees have been here since the slaves came to Rumah and the drums and dancing in the moonlight followed by fertility festivals are just fun. (Did you know that Pagoth can change their bodies in all sorts of interesting ways??)

I also have to go to Rumah and that’s where I went first. Years of being besieged by Vika and company have unsurprisingly left them less than delighted to see us, and the priests of Induk are sure that I am somehow responsible for tricking their goddess into allying with Aurora. (I suppose I am really but it isn’t polite to shout at me at the formal greeting ceremony in the town hall in front of all the people). I had deliberately not dressed up in finery, just in work-a-day brigade uniform. I presented them with some proposals that Rapeezo and Lelang had worked out. (Lelang was off on a hush-hush mission this year by the way). The basic idea is that they guard the river and let our ships past and we leave them mostly alone. That seemed to go down quite well with everyone except the priests- I think all the people were relieved to find out that they didn’t have to actually speak to us or associate with us or anything terrible like that. They really need to get out and party more, but I don’t suppose introducing them to the Spatlos boogie will go down to well. It is already enough of a strain acknowledging the friendship of one new goddess.

I just got back from my "royal progress" as a certain trooper now on extended shit-shovelling duty called it. It seems there has been a lot of excitement up north at the forts. We had to abandon the silver mines early on in the summer and Vika, who was in charge of Benteng Perak, has reinforced her unlucky reputation by having a dozen brother and sisters killed when the place was overrun by Yilani who seethed and swarmed and boiled out of the North like a tidal wave. In fact the Captain formally commended Vika for pulling out early enough to avoid the loss of a third of the brigade. The Yilani have been all over the upper reaches of the Sungai Jalan, and were clearly poised to sweep down towards Golah Novak.

T’Heros managed to score a couple of minor victories in the forests with hit-and-run tactics and got behind the main force to try to cut off their supply lines.

Astonishment all around- they had no supply lines.

Second astonishment- for the first time we saw family groups of Yilani on the move. They hatch from eggs, by the way. It looked like the whole tribe had moved. Nothing the Captain did could find out why until he captured a few adolescent ones and induced them to tell us what they know. All they know is that the tribe must move when katavroheezo comes. That seems to be some combination of a religious duty and a plague. All the rangers found further north were some disembowelled, beheaded and thoroughly carrion-eaten Yilani corpses.

The Captain put on a big show of strength at Benteng Ambar, giving up the whole of the upper reaches of the Sungai Jalan. A few bands of Yilani did appear but turned around again when the saw the defended fort. At the end of the summer the whole lot picked up their packs and walked back into the northern mist. The Captain and Vika breathed a huge sigh of relief and, very cautiously, went to see what the damage was.

Amazingly, the answer was "almost none". They had stripped the valley of anything edible, chopped down a few trees for firewood and had used Benteng Perak as some sort of communal latrine and used most of its walls for firewood but otherwise things were mostly left intact. The only nasty surprise was a small ambush laid on for T’Heros when a single Fesero tried to assassinate him one night but that was easily dealt with by his bodyguards who had been good lads and listened to the relevant bits when Old Grumpy had read out the annals. (Which reminds me that I ought to make sure that there are regular readings even when I’m going to be away.) The lack of food was the most worrying feature, but fortunately the crops have been reasonable this year so winter will be a bit short of luxury but we should have plenty of meat and bread.

I went back to the tribes to ask about katavroheezo. The Damai didn’t know the word, but they had marked the periodic appearance of Yilani tribes for many years; they called it the Kretanje. Their reaction was just to "go tree" until the tribes decided to go back north again. They few stragglers who decided it might be nicer to set up house down south were subtly "persuaded" back up north by Damai forest "ghosts" who mysteriously smashed all the clutches of eggs, no matter how well hidden. The Kelana said that the Yilani did appear on the plains occasionally but that they soon went away again.

Still, if they are only on the current scale we can cope, especially if we prepare some obvious clear ways to bypass the Sungai Jalan in the hope that they’ll carry on past if it looks too hard to be worth bothering with.

It is the middle of winter of year six. I’m sorry I haven’t had time to keep up this diary, I’ve been busy for the last year or so. It all started with the Yilani taking most of the food from the upper Sungai Jalan last year. That was followed by a particularly cold but very dry winter. There was a bit of disease in the city, mostly scurvy and the like because we were a bit short of food.

It all got a bit worse when spring arrived because it went from very cold and dry to very hot and dry. The Sungai Jalan slowed to a bare trickle, and although Rasa, Halintar, Sekutu and Kanela worked like slaves to make irrigation systems there wasn’t much to distribute in them. The lake got very brackish and dirty and we had to forbid people swimming or cleaning things in it. The sewerage system on the hill blocked up because we couldn’t keep the flow going and we saw some cholera, typhoid and malaria which fortunately the Damai have some bark to treat. Apotek breveted Pengodda to Sergeant in charge of hygiene and I think the two of them staved off an epidemic.

Then summer started and was even hotter than spring. We did get a cholera epidemic which killed dozens and dozens of slaves because they wouldn’t follow brigade doctrine.

We all cheered when the rains came a week or so later, but the cheers soon turned sour. The rains didn’t stop. They came and came, storm after storm. Then about midsummer the grandmother of all those little storms swept down along the coast. We nearly lost half our ships, only Samudera’s quick thinking managed to beach them in time. Three brothers were killed in the storm when one of the buildings collapsed on them. Many of the other buildings lost their roof. Worst of all, the storms wrecked the irrigation systems and flooded the fields. When the storm abated, we were clearly in bad trouble. The crops were ruined, the foraging would be extremely poor and the land probably couldn’t support us in addition to the tribes.

We needed to buy food, lots of food, and we needed it in a real hurry. We were already starving and diseases love weakened, hungry victims. Vika, and Lelang went off to Pembelian (T’Heros reckons I’m a bit too notorious there). Rapeezo, Putera and I were sent off to Galadiahos. We were pretty handicapped by the fact that we had no bulging chests of silver or amber after last year’s Yilani incursion so we had to strip the brigade stores of almost everything that wasn’t edible.

Just as an aside, the Captain has finally done the sensible thing and made a third Engineer’s office- the Naval Engineer, filled by Samudera of course. Sekutu, a Sathros who joined us only last year from all the way down south in Korona, was promoted to Enviable Engineer. Sekutu is a very quiet person and never complains, which is quite a contrast with Old Grumpy, our only other Sathros brother. T’Heros still refuses to make Putera an officer.

Off we sailed in the hastily-patched Penjara and with two newly-named transports, Gandum and Jagung (which mean wheat and corn, wishful thinking on Plesacica’s part I think. Vika wanted to call one of them katavroheezo because anything which scares the Yilani has to be good, but we decided that a) it was stupid to name a ship after anything we didn’t understand and b) Vika is never going to be allowed to pour the olive oil because the luck of anything she’s in charge of is proverbially disastrous.)

I was actually the Captain of Penjara this time around which means I outranked everybody on board. Which I did anyway. On ship though Samudera outranks everybody except the Brigade Captain, even the ship Captains. I missed Topeekos, but he was on the Northern party and wasn’t captaining anymore because he’s a shadow of himself since surviving the cholera. We had some brief skirmishes along the southern coast with blue silk caps who had presumably run in front of the storm all the way to the tip of the peninsula and had slowly been working their way back up. The Pemburu villagers we spoke to were all pretty upset, firstly because the storm had hit them pretty hard, secondly because the pirates had been stealing and raiding to replace their stuff and thirdly because a few Ohian warships had been prowling the coast all summer and sinking any fishing boat that got too close.

I said we couldn’t do much about the Ohians right now but we did go on a silk cap hunt for a few days even though we were in a real hurry because it always helps to show your friends that you are willing to go out of your way to help even if you are starving. They did give us lots of fish to keep us going of course. We had several entertaining chases in and out of the bays and islands at the southern tip of the peninsula, under the shadow of the clouds from the great volcanos. We managed to hunt down four pirate ships but we ended up sinking the lot because they were in awful repair even before Penjara got at them. We also did a formal and stately dance with the Ohian warships- running their blockade of the Southern gap which Rapeezo called Berangin Ribut, which means stormcloud gap which is pretty apt. They had about a dozen ships to patrol the gap and we had to sneak through at night when the ash was falling like rain and hid us from sight.

We kept as far from the coast as we dared as we bypassed Kadra and sailed the direct line to Limanos which was a bit nerve-wracking because I’ve not done many dead-reckoning sailings before, but we sighted land about sixty miles up the coast from Limanos harbour which was pretty good (and I’d tried to make sure we veered too far north rather than south anyway). We discussed our plan of action and decided to sail upriver to the grain markets of Korona.

I reluctantly had to agree with Rapeezo that because we had very diverse trade goods rather than chests dripping with riches that we’d have to do the trade gradually and subtly. We went and stayed in a big empty house in Korona that was already staffed by half a dozen brothers. It seemed that the Elder of the Brothers Kokeeno had come to supervise the house’s activities this year. Putera and I set about distracting the gaze of merchants, nobles and priests from the activities of our old Uncle as Mainmata and Cara ("Flirt" and "Fashion"- they don’t speak much Vorras around here). Can you guess which one I was?

Anyway, I spent a month flashing bare ankles and well-formed heels to the nobility of Korona. The local fashion at the moment was for particularly ugly and ungainly jewelled sandals which look like the sort of thing your grandfather wore in front of the fire. I adopted what the Koronans thought was a "mysterious ingenue" look with three layers of progressively more brilliant and opalescent white silk dresses that flowed and swirled just short of my ankles, cut with no bust so that my belly was bare. I kept my feet bare and dangled them a lot because a lot of men like that, especially in a city where the height of fashion footwear is so constraining that you can barely stand in them. This also meant that my hosts often rolled out silk woven carpets for me to walk on which meant I never failed to make an entrance. I was the archetypal blushing virgin, the only colour in my whole outfit was the star sapphire I wore in my belly button. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you how many dukes begged to be allowed to remove that with their teeth!

Meanwhile, Putera had gone to the opposite extreme. She wore thigh-length black snakeskin boots with black silk trousers and loose shirt cut in the pirate style, twin curved serpent-tooth daggers with tooled golden hilts and huge opal pommels, a necklace of glorious multicoloured opals and a golden headband with a magnificent blazing red milky opal carved in the shape of a skull at her brow. She looked totally lethal, a real change from the usual shy-bride-on-her-wedding-day. It was fun because we were being more like what we were on the inside than what we usually look like on the outside for a while.

We refused to ever go to the same party right until the end when King Idroios (the very dishy and criminally unmarried) himself invited us to the palace for the end-of-season bash. Let me tell you that royalty can do the Spatlos boogie as well as anyone if the priests have gone home for the evening and the throne in Korona has very uncomfortable spiky bits that stick in your back at awkward moments. (And Putera owes me three giant Kotac and a kiss with Samudera, though I’m not sure I’m going to collect the latter part of the bet).

Anyway, the distraction tactics had worked pretty well because the merchants were too busy drooling in our footsteps or getting slapped by their wives to notice just how much damage Rapeezo was doing to their purses. We not only got our ships filled with provisions but also acquired another eight transports so full of food that we had to put some of it back on the market.

Sneaking though the blockade with three nearly empty ships had been easy and the elements had favoured our direct line sailing from Kadra. I was very much less happy about trying to run a blockade with eleven ships loaded to their rails with the survival of the brigade. Nor could I possibly do a direct sailing- we were running so low in the water that a squall could sink us in minutes. No, there was only one thing for it. Sod gradually and subtly. I marched into King Idroios’ audience chamber clad in full company panoply and demanded that the Exiled Red Brigade of the Rainbow Guard of the Kingdom of Galadiahos be reinstated, brandishing Rodenos’ original signed proclamations concerning us, our charred and bloodstained but still legible pardons from King Skara, a sworn statement from the chief judge that Rodenos’ prohibition on the civil service hiring us in perpetuity did not apply as we were directly employed by the crown... and a bill for about a century’s back wages.

Idroios nearly burst and I lost my future husband right then. Fortunately, with Rapeezo to back me up in the tricky negotiations, we managed to secure an honourable discharge, a trade treaty and a royal naval escort in exchange for waiving the debt (which would have left Idroios and Galadiahos with nothing but two moths and a loincloth, by the way). Was it my fault that Rapeezo happened to forget to mention that the Ohians were baying for our blood until after the King had signed up to protect naval trade between Galadiahos and Golah Novak? I’m a soldier and a sailor but even I hadn’t heard some of the inventive and colourful names he called me when his chancellor worked out that Galadiahos had just declared war on the Priests of Ohia by proxy.

(Dreamy sighed. Putera laughed at the expression on my face. I got her back though: I took that kiss from Samudera in the middle of the parade ground in front of half the brigade, dodged the slap and shouted about the bet over my shoulder as I took to my heels. Samudera’s row with Putera lasted for days and involved a lot of throwing very breakable things in her general direction because it doesn’t do much good to scream abuse at someone who’s deaf as a statue).

Anyway, off we sailed with an escort of military biremes, all bearing the Galadiahan flag. We distributed the cargo between a few more vessels so we could at least avoid sailing the full length of the Ohian coast, and punched through the blockade across Berangin Ribut with a following wind courtesy of Aurora and the Eight Deaths (who were quite happy to welcome the Brigade back into the fold because we still honour Ohros in the oath and adopted our young goddess as The Death of Birth Anew so they are now the Nine Deaths).

We got back to Golah Novak on the cusp of winter. Dama, the admiral of the Galadhian fleet, decided to leave one bireme with us over winter and returned with the rest of the force. Lelang and Vika had returned less heavily laded but a good deal earlier, so the worst ravages of disease had been averted and the city was bankrupt but full-bellied which is a better way around that rich and dead any day.

This time it wasn’t just T’Heros who looked at me funny for the first few days after I got back. Stutter (who’s back from the swamps but still desperately miserable) looks at me like I’m made of delicate silver filigree that will break if you even sneeze near it. Lelang lost his hungry look and Prijekor damn near wets himself when I say good morning. I talked to Sheeda and Harapse about it and they both said that half the city was terrified of me and the other half thought I was literally Aurora incarnate. That’s just being plain silly. T’Heros even sounded more exasperated than angry when we told him what had happened though I did see several reproachful looks directed at Rapeezo for not keeping me on a tighter leash.

The appearance of the first food from Pembelian seemed to release the floodgates on a tidal wave of activity from the whole city. I’m not all that easy to impress but I was staggered by how the Captain had laid out, planned and constructed a real city from a broken walled town in a single summer. The Captain may be a bit quiet and he can seem indecisive but really once he has all the elements ready he is a phenomenally gifted strategist. He just doesn’t like extemporising. That’s what Harapse says anyway, and that’s why what she calls my "heartstopping audacity and grandiose theatrical flourish" makes him so very very very nervous. So when I got the chance I dragged T’Heros into my house and got him drunk and had a good long talk. He said he was just a bit worried by the way I’d started three separate wars in eighteen months and didn’t look too much happier when I countered that I’d finished two as well so it was just a matter of time before I could sort the others out. I promised to warn him next time to try to lower his blood pressure. I was put on local patrol duty for a while to rebuild the fortifications upriver (and probably to keep me out of harm’s way for a few months so the Captain’s stomach ulcer had a chance to settle down).

It was a quiet few months in the forts but as the winter started to bite I got a feeling of nervous trouble from down-river as the cold closed in. Sure enough, I was summoned back to the city as the first snow started to fall. It turned out that the Kelana and the Pemburu were very unhappy, almost to the point of war. We had all that food, you see. The Damai were alright, they just went tree a bit earlier in the year and sucked what they needed from sun and soil. The Kelana had just about enough to get them through the winter but tight belts certainly do make a neighbour’s full storehouses ever more tempting. Worst of all were the poor Pemburu, whose fishing fleets had been wrecked by pirates and Ohian military ships all year. We could have held them all off but there had to be a better way.

The Captain sent me south to the Pemburu because I’d been the only friendly company face they’d seen all year. He went north to the Kelana, which I was very relieved about. He’s a nomad which makes it much easier to start with, and he’s not a woman which means the ignorant kavala-men don’t treat him like a serving girl all the time (which is even more annoyingly patronising in Agrammos than in most other languages). Before we left we agreed that if no other solution presented itself we would offer to enfranchise them and share as if we were the same tribe. We strongly agreed that just offering food in response to threat of arms was a really bad precedent- before they got so much as a Horevo nut from us they’d have to give us some guarantee of future friendship.

So off we went. The Captain went with Lelang, a heavily-armoured cavalry troop and a very light supply train. I left the day after with Lumpius, Vika, a dozen of the lads and wagons laden to the axles with grain, apples, metakeenos eggs and lots of beer (Sheeda still makes Vreeo’s Magic Mix and Penggoda’s Patent Philtre but she and Jahac have got the recipe for Jabukovo about right and even I think that tastes halfway drinkable and I hate beer).

The Captain, so he later told me, endured hours of riding at the gallop between tribal winter encampments and debated and haggled and bargained late into the night with the elders of each clan before hammering out a cunning agreement laden with terms and conditions adopting the Kelana into our tribe whilst maintaining their independence. He did manage to get something approaching tribute from them in the form of breeding pairs for war Kavala which is excellent as we were suffering a bit because we’d lost a lot of ours over the year.

I rode up to the closest Pemburu encampment that had more than two tents in it, threw the covers of the wagons open and watched Lumpius, Vika and the lads beat off the hungry hordes. Having got their attention, I brandished a copy of the treaty with Galadiahos in the air, announced that we would protect their fishing forever if they joined us and said that of course no member of our tribe would go hungry while Golah Novak had grain in its storehouses. The Kemes elders don’t do much in the way of sagacious negotiation or inscrutable questioning- they all shouted their assent and we had a massive drinking party. A week or so later pretty much every Kemes in the tribe had come to us to join up and get his backpack of goodies and his keg of good Jabukovo. When our wagon was nearly empty I invited a bunch of them back to the city to help distribute the food.

On the way back I had a detour to the woods because I wanted to see Okretan and Kita. I knew they didn’t need food, but they were happy to see us and many of the tribe "went walking" to have a midwinter celebration with us. (I’d carefully kept a couple of barrels of Inje for the ceremony because I knew it had been a big hit with Kita when she’d visited me in the city). At the end of the ceremony I offered the Damai the franchise as well and they all joined even though they didn’t need any food or military protection or anything and we all had another dance. It turned out that the Damai’s patron was Kendinginian and the Pemburu’s was Pancaran Air, who as everybody knows were incarnations of Kretharee and Kreenee, so I guess the gods were all pretty happy too. They all already knew that Aurora didn’t demand worship from anyone because Lunak had been travelling among them since we got here.

The Captain and I were both delighted with the deals we had struck but I won’t say too much about what we though of the other’s. So now we had a "friend and ally" to the North and our tribe extended all the way down the western plateau of the Pembajak peninsula. We didn’t have a sumptuous winter by any means but nobody starved to death and we had plenty of winter revels with the Pemburu when they came to the city to collect their food.

It is late spring of year seven now. We’re trying to make good my promise to protect our southern citizens’ fishing fleet, so the Galadhian bireme is going back home with a few brothers to sort out plans and so forth. Samudera wanted to go but everyone else decided that she was probably the one person we couldn’t do without right now so she had to stay. At least I persuaded the Captain to make sure Putera could stay with her this year. I was a bit disappointed but not surprised to find out that I wasn’t going south with them. I was much more surprised when Rapeezo stepped down as Quartermaster Politicos and resigned the brigade to head south and become a merchant prince for real.

Lelang has taken over as Quartermaster Politicos and his deputy Souvlia, is now the Enviable Quartermaster. Souvlia is a Svika (the first Svika sister we have had in many many years) from the really far south, in the deep desert in the heights beyond Paramera. Quite why she wanted to move to a place with weather as bad as ours I’ll never know. She did look mighty relieved to be sailing off south.

I was going to have a lot of dull things to do for the whole year by the look of it.

It is nearly a year since I wrote anything. We have had a lot of sea battles dancing around the Ohian fleet but nothing decisive. Galadiahos has been a lot more enthusiastic about the whole business since we got the amber, silver, Kotac and Inje flowing south. Rapeezo is probably the richest man alive by now. The city has been pretty peaceful and continues to grow apace. We have several hundred families now because some of the Pemburu have moved in permanently; we’ve managed to expand the brigade to six hundred which is fully a third of the free population of Golah Novak, and many of the others are apprenticed and waiting for the three missions. We’ve finally got the metal works going and are churning out arms and armour at a goodly rate. Samudera is the terror of the shipyards and the navy is expanding so quickly I don’t even know the names of all the ships any more. The walls of the city are pretty defensible and more impressively we’ve got people to defend them. We’re a bit short of slaves but a lot of Pemburu are happy to turn up for a month to heave stones around for a bit of pay and a gawk at the sights of the big city. The architecture is still pretty painful though and the fashion scene still consists of me, Samudera and Putera.

Oh and I forgot to say that Stutter seems to have got totally fed up of life in Golah Novak (he didn’t really get on with the local tribes for some reason). He’s even resigned the brigade I think and he left the city on board a ship bound for Pembelian. Nobody claims to know where he is going and why but Lunak, Kanela and I think we have a fairly shrewd idea. So we don’t have an Enviable Chaplain at the moment and nobody seems to think we need one so it looks like that is going to be vacant for a while.

Anyway, I am off to look into some bandit raids on the forts and various trade routes soon. Unlike previous raids which have been mostly destructive, the current lot seem to be purely profit-motivated. Maybe the amber-rush story has its dark side too. I guess there will always be plenty of thugs who just know that the best way to find amber is to take it from someone who’s got it.

Gods, I hate nomads and I hate tents and I hate smelly ill-tempered Kavala and I hate ticks and leeches and I really really hate Kelana warriors. I’ve been in the field for months now, over the winter and everything. and I haven’t had a single hot bath since last bloody summer. It is spring of year nine now. I’ve been tracking these "bandits" all over the bloody peninsula, only to find innocent Kelana clans going about their business. I just know that the birdfucking arrogant mustachio-and-muscle bastards are behind the whole lot but have I been able to catch them at it? No I have not. I hate this stinking assignment and I hate this stinking army and I WANT A BATH.

Finally I have managed to catch a clan red-handed with their arms full of loot. I had to get Kanela and Lunak and Okretan and Kita (who are now full brigade members by the way) to help me spy the Klopeekids out and catch them beating up a bunch of our citizens who were peacefully looking for amber in the forests. I’m afraid I really lost my patience with them and slaughtered the whole tribe down to the last Kavala. I am not having "friends and allies" slaughtering my brothers whenever our back is turned. I don’t know how the Captain will react to this one. Harapse (who has been a great friend these last few months) thinks he’ll understand- after all it is hardly grand theatre or even mildly audacious this time.

Harapse was dead right this time. The Captain backed me to the hilt in the officer’s meeting then ordered us to war and tore up the Kelana treaty. T’Heros took command of the cavalry which has always been his forte and his instinct. Apotek guarded the city; Vika and Plesacica commanded the infantry and Lunak the archers. And me? I was a one-woman divine-assisted strike force.

I can’t dwell on how the Captain managed to trick and dupe the Kelana into giving battle because I wasn’t there. I had slipped into the camp of their clan chiefs dressed in the rags that they all wear and made like a serving girl. Let me tell you that Kelana clan chiefs eat too much garlic and drink too much beer and have never, ever had a wash and getting groped by one is a bit like having amorous approaches from a horny orthos that is a singularly unskilled lover. I particularly hated Bozulmak who was the head of the Atelsi, the biggest of the clans of the tribe. Bozulmak really liked to make sure his victim for the night suffered.

While the Captain skilfully manoeuvred the Kelana into what looked like an ideal strategic situation where they could finish the brigade off in a single decisive battle, I was scrubbing Kavala shit of riding tack and getting my behind thumped every time a clan chief came in spitting distance. (They seemed to think spitting on it first was a particularly romantic thing that made them out as a sensitive and masterful lover for some reason). I got lots of hateful accidental bumps and hair pulling from the wretched women who thought I was just too pretty and was stealing their prospective lords and masters from them which made it even worse.

Without giving too many secrets away let me just re-emphasise that it is vital to have rangers as spies. I was ready on the day T’Heros had set for the battle. I’d managed to work out that Bozulmak was the high priest of Faveros the Terrible for the Kelana, which was far from obvious because all the religious ceremonies were done by the men of the Kelana around the fire while we lesser creatures sat in the cold shivering and waiting to be raped when they finished the rituals. The women had their own dark and nameless deities who were if anything even more repellent than the mens’.

All day T’Heros teased and led them in sally and retreat. It is really the most difficult thing in all of warfare to get your men to stage a repeated controlled retreat as if defeated and maintain discipline. I was really proud of my brothers and sisters. They did it dozens of times, all day and into night. Only when the moon rose in near-total dark did they finally lead the exhausted and disorganised Kelana into what looked like the perfect place for a slaughter- a shallow valley with a steep cliff at the end. Of course, the Kelana knew the ground and had been trying to corner us there. They weren’t total novices at this sort of thing so they had scouts sent out but scouts who look at trees see trees, not archers. Scouts who see Kelana riders don’t see brigade cavalry. And the two scouts who caught sight of Lumpius’ fresh infantry reserve had unfortunate accidents between dismounting and getting to the command tent. You can kill a man very much stronger than you are if you get them by surprise and what are two more bodies with slit throats on a battlefield? Since there was no chain of command, only the head birdfuckers in the tent and everybody else, no report got through.

So they had the small band of exhausted company cavalry penned in against the cliff and they charged in like the drunken mob they were to finish us off. Which is when the trees turned back into Pagoth Archers and the infantry came roaring out of the turf-roofed bunkers we’d dug a moon ago and the fresh cavalry reserves cut off the mouth of the ravine. As the slaughter began, my favourite loverboy grabbed hold of the nearest serving girl to rip her throat open to summon his patron to save his tribe on this, his high holy day. Guess which servant girl happened to be nearest? Bozulmak wasn’t anything near as strong as he thought he was and he looked really surprised when he finished the short prayer and found himself wrestling with a wildcat. I really didn’t like the man, so I didn’t bother taking Faveros’ sacrificial dagger off him. I just closed my hands over his fist and jerked. I think his arm broke in about three places. He screamed as the bloody fragments of bone shot out like arrows and blood sprayed all over. The scream lasted about an eye-blink before it turned to a gushing gurgle as I hacked the high priest’s head off with his own holy sacrificial dagger in grasped in his own hand. That usually manages to get the attention of even the remotest of gods, especially coming after a desperate plea to save the tribal warriors from annihilation on the battlefield.

The other chiefs were of course coming at me but the spectacle of Iliskin, the Atmaca clan patriarch, exploding in a bloody mess as Faveros the Terrible stepped through his flesh into our world. (Iliskin was the high priest of Ksenkano the Avenger which shows you how much those gods like each other). While the birdfuckers were gawking at the sudden appearance of the avatar, I’d done the sensible thing and bolted like a seleekos whose just bitten the tail of a Kejang thinking it was a tasty grass snake. I could feel the avatar growing behind me as another couple of clan chiefs exploded to provide more muscle and bone for the god’s dark form. I felt the eyes of the god sear into my back as I ran (I had burns there that took ages to heal even with Penggoda’s best balms but there’s hardly a scar thankfully). The grass around me burst into carmine flame and the wet pops behind me indicated that the god wasn’t bothering to chase me, he was just killing enough clan chiefs to grow big enough to reach out and grab me.

I think I managed to surprise him by doing an about-face jump which Lumpius might teach you if you manage to pass the ranger’s exam. I raced back the way I’d come, suddenly too close for the huge arms to catch. He looked like a mountainous man made of bubbling black pitch surrounded by a slaughterhouse where his own clan chiefs had died to provide his form. The whole battlefield was alight, the flames dark like the last embers of the fire. My rags were on fire as I charged back towards him, ducking and dodging as his huge hands tried to pick me up. I’ve never climbed a god before and it is a good thing his flesh wasn’t really burning pitch or I’d have been barbecued Dreamy.

He was about thirty feet tall so I swarmed up his ankles and got up to his knees while he reached to slap me. I dodged the huge hands because they were quite ponderous (the sideswipe broke a huge war Kavala’s neck) and leapt like a trapeze performer to grab hold of his engorged penis. You can see where his worshippers got their ideas from since he tried to spit boiling pitch at me.

I hung on to the underside of his pendulous member fairly unscathed expect for one of my hands which got scalded. Just as he was reaching for me again I extracted the high holy sacrificial dagger from my belt and slashed at the huge organ at the base where it met his balls. The first stroke only got about a third of the way through but it certainly got his attention.

All the carmine flames winked out and he concentrated on trying to pluck me from the base of his most prized asset. It is quite difficult to do that when your assailant and your groin are englobed in an opalescent golden codpiece of divine light. Two more slashes as I fell to the earth, my perch now severed from its original owner.

A fountain of dark gore engulfed my shield and only the goddess’ light saved me when Faveros fell screaming on top of me clutching at his groin to stem to fountain of blood shooting from it. That put me in just the right place to slice open his scrotum and slam in the little glowing pearl that Lunak had asked the goddess for at dawn one fine day several months ago. Light exploded in Faveros’ scrotum and his scream shook roof tiles free in Merah.

I climbed out from the whimpering mountain of flesh to see that the physical battle was over as well. The nomad warriors had gone from exultation to total despair in thirty seconds. Not one of them still held spear or sword in hand.

Aurora walked out from the trees and walked slowly and sedately through the company’s lines. The Kelana parted like cut silk as she walked across the dead and dying to stand at my side, by the feet of the groaning black giant. It was my turn to speak for Brigade and Goddess and my practised speech disappeared so this is what I said.

"Faveros, your servants have done injury to us. Friendship. Alliance. These were the words your treacherous leader whispered. Sharing. Brotherhood. These were the promises they exchanged for succour in the ice of winter."

"Do not try us. We are magnanimous brothers and sisters. We are generous friends. We are patient allies. But we are terrible enemies. My sister and I have your manhood, Faveros. We have castrated you."

The giant’s agonised voice tumbled boulders down the cliff as he swore vengeance for his injury.

I let him promise the most awful torments, right up until he said something about pressing me down in the dirt and taking me.

"We have your manhood Faveros. You are no longer capable of the act. Even if I let you sew yourself back together my sister’s little present will keep you impotent, unable to discharge your duties. How can you fertilize the tribe now, Father-of-multitudes?"

The giant just sobbed. Like most bullies and rapists he didn’t have the courage to face defeat.

"You lack even the discipline to ask for death. Your people are defeated by the strength of discipline and the power of training. So much for all that power, all that dark strength. The strongest thrust is of no avail if the enemy deflects the blade."

Faveros had been slowly shrinking as the stolen blood fountained out of his wound. He was barely larger than a tall man now. Aurora reached down and picked up his severed penis in one dainty hand. She threw it back at him. He scrabbled for it in the gore-soaked mud like a orthos after battlefield carrion.

"Keep it, Faveros. For now. You may have your fertility back. But my sister’s pearl will remain where it is as a reminder that what was once your right and entitlement is now your only by our sufferance. Our sufferance is not limitless, Faveros. We will take one part of two of your vigour, one part in two of your strength. My sister will keep for herself a small part of your dominion, just to remind the world who it is who rules He Who Rules The Dark Moon."

There was a collective gasp as the god disappeared and something suddenly flared golden at the zenith of the sky before fading to the softest gold. The disk of the moon at full dark was no longer blacker than the night. It was shimmering with the faintest touch of dawn. And it remains so to this day as a reminder to the world that He Who Rules The Dark Moon is its undisputed master no longer, for he was defeated and one of his balls replaced with a tiny pearl.

We took half the adults of the Kelana as our slaves... after we killed the few chiefs that Faveros hadn’t slaughtered for us. We had to execute a fair few of the warriors we took so in fact we ended up with a lot of placid men and downtrodden women, but they were strong, willing workers especially when they found the whip lighter on their back as slaves in Golah Novak than they had been under uncles and fathers under the tents.

It is midwinter of year nine and I need to record that Vika has decided to step down as Enviable Sergeant. She isn’t retiring though, she just doesn’t want to be in command of anyone any more. So now she’s just a trooper and the new Sergeant gets to shout at her for a change. No-one seems to treat like one of the lads of course. The new Enviable Sergeant is Mirtavac, a Kemes trooper who got one of his arms chopped off in the battle at Rumah. He’s certainly loud but he is if anything even more of a lout than Vika. He has been trying to make coarse innuendoes to me but if he thinks I’m ever going to have a romantic candle-lit dinner with a man who uses cesspits to wash his clothes in he is mad.

Putera still isn’t an officer. It is getting silly. She’s one of the most even-tempered people I know, so when I went over for Kotac and tea with her and Samudera yesterday after the captain announced Vika’s replacement and I heard the (not uncommon) crashing of hurled ceramics I assumed that Samudera in a temper. But no, when I got in the door I found the fiery one trying to calm the cool one down. I have a lot of respect for T’Heros but I really think this business with Putera has gone on long enough. She’s nearly as old as me and has been on almost as many missions all of which she’s done with great competence and I’ve been Enviable Lieutenant for nearly ten years and she’s still a trooper. If stupidity, bad manners, lecherousness and plain bad hygiene don’t bar you from command why should deafness?

So Samudera and I had to calm poor Putera down. I decided both my friends really needed cheering up. Samudera’s been chained to the boatyards for years and Putera never seems to get any recognition for anything and I’ve been having all the fun so I thought it was time to make an executive decision to improve the morale of some of our troopers, i.e. us. So I got some packs together, fetched Harapse from the pub, left a note for the Captain and we walked out into the darkness.

The moon was out and it was really cold and the snow was lying about a foot thick on the ground but Rasa had made lots of snowshoes so it was alright. We were all wearing nice clothes but they were so stuffed full of Soang-chick down to be warm that we looked like balloons. We walked down the path along the lake, way past the boatyards. The lake is generally too big to freeze but a lot of the bays and streams and pools along the side were frozen and we had a lot of fun whooping and sliding across the ice. We passed the last guard-post where a certain Trooper Gembira who was on duty let slip a few smutty asides about love-ins which would see him onto frozen latrine trench duty when we got back, but even that couldn’t take the Inje from our fun.

It had been really years since I’d been a proper ranger, but it doesn’t go away. We walked and talked and laughed as our breath steamed in the icy cold. At the northern shore of the lake we headed west into the rising sun and although we’d walked all night we didn’t feel like stopping. We carried on until the early afternoon when I found the bluff I’d been looking for that I had scouted out best part of a decade ago before Saint Dreamy the Enviable Lieutenant. It was roomy for three so we started up a roaring fire to melt some snow and we snuggled together under the Soang-chick clothes and ate the slightly stale cakes I’d taken from the pub and soaked them in warmed Inje which was great. We fell asleep and Harapse watched over us from her pole by the entrance.

When we woke up, the sun was just setting. I could see from their eyes and their blushes that the girls wanted a bit of time on their own, so Harapse and I went out to hunt some dinner. It had been so long since I did that! Harapse had never been out on a hunt before and when you have a friend with you it is like everything that was mundane becomes new. We found tracks in the snow where a Pagoth had passed last night and we found some bird’s nests so we could have spit-roast Lancar to go with the rest of the provisions I’d brought. On the way back we found the rest of the Pagoth copse and made friends; they were Damai of course but not ones I’d really met properly before. We all went back to the cave after midnight and set out fires in the dell and danced until dawn and Simjesan and I snuck off into the bushes and so did Samudera and Putera and it was all alright again.

It isn’t all that long since midwinter. I am off to Galadiahos again as soon as the weather allows it, and I am going to pull two fast ones on the Captain. First of all I have asked Putera to spend the spring and summer with the Damai finding out what she can and recruiting as many as she is able and I’ve given her command of all the diplomatic stuff while I’m away which she’ll be brilliant at so long as nobody tries to interfere with her or overrule her or anything.

Putera is getting quite good at speaking to trees on her own, Lunak has been teaching her to do it properly and so she often sort of wraps herself around a tree (which you’d better not do if there is a brigade member around or you’ll never hear the end of it even if you put the whole brigade on barnacle scraping duty) and sort of float until the tree can hear you. I can’t do it myself and even Harapse laughed at me when I tried and made snide comments about wrapping myself around prodigious shafts and things because apparently it reminds everyone of a certain incident not so long ago. So I’ve given that up because trees are more fun if you’ve got some Pagoth along to hurry them up a bit. I don’t have Putera’s patience.

The second fast one T’Heros is going to spit blood about but it needs to be done. I’m taking Samudera with me this time. Harapse wanted to come as well so I asked Rasa to make her a sort of stand thing with a white silk cushion which I think is much more dignified than sticking her on a stick.

By the way, Kanela has got an official apprentice now. He’s called Jagal which means "the butcher" which is a rather cruel name that Vika hung on him because the poor lad is brave to a fault but just can’t cope with blood and guts. He doesn’t faint or anything but I’ve never met anyone quite so squeamish. He is from Merah originally I think. I don’t know what sort of sorceror he will make but he is already one of the best artists in the place- he can sketch and draw things like they’re really there and he can sculpt too. But I can dance better than him because he’s nervous and you need a certain degree of self-confidence to really strut your stuff.

We’ve been in Galadiahos for a month or two now and it is high summer and very very hot. "Uncle" Rapeezo has put on weight and doesn’t look quite so insignificant anymore which he told me was so he looked a bit more jolly and trustworthy. Merchants and nobles don’t like dealing with people who look like lean and mean seleekos on the hunt, they prefer contented metakeenos chewing on leaves.

Everybody knows we’re the Exiled Red Brigade here so we didn’t hide. I decided to be Cara again. Everyone was going around barefoot or in big black shiny boots this year (HAH!) so I’m wearing soft brown boots made from yearling metakeenos skin cured so it is so soft it feels like silk. The tops are trimmed with something called fur which I got from the Pagoth from the mountains who say that there are some strange creatures up there that have something like long hair all over. It feels really good all sort of fluffy and it looks like nothing else and if THIS catches on we’d better get trading in the stuff. It is too hot though so I do have to give in and follow my own fashion and go barefoot a lot of the day. I’ve been wearing a selection of skirts made of the same soft leather dyed a reddish-brown cut very high on my left leg and with long tassels and with white silk shirts. I have some necklaces of siput siput shells with a polished jewel Kotac shell pendant. I’ve also cut my hair a lot shorter this year. I’ve been quite coy most of the time and haven’t done more than dance with anyone, even Dukes.

Samudera on the other hand has been a total scandal. She managed to find a dye that is exactly the same shade as her hair and she looks like a raging inferno with silks and satin so thin that there’s not much left to the imagination. She’s got golden bracelets and anklets with tiny siput siput of dark green with little bells in that jingle as she walks. Of course, Samudera isn’t interested in the men who pant and drool in her footsteps but she’s managed to sleep with about half the princesses and duchesses, especially the ones whose husbands have been lusting after her the most. It is a good job we’re not going to be around too much longer or there’s going to be outbreaks of street fighting in the palace precincts. Honestly, you should never lock a redhead up for a decade then take her to somewhere like Korona to party if you want a quiet life. I’ve already had to prevent three assassination attempts and the noble divorce courts have never been so busy.

Every so often we have a night off to recover from partying. Those are the days when we discard the fashion in favour of black silk trousers and soft black boots and loose black shirts and sneak off to the shipyards and docks so Samudera can find out exactly what the state of Galadiahos’ military shipbuilding is. She says she’s picked up a dozen good ideas and has about the same number of suggestions for our allies which Rapeezo will bleed into the court once we’ve gone.

We are leaving tomorrow and I’m pretty frazzled even though Samudera looks like she could fight off the hordes of Ohia on her own. She’s got a sort of glow around her which Rapeezo says is how I usually look. Maybe I’m getting old.

I’m not getting old!! Something wonderful happened last night but I’ve not going to tell anyone except Harapse because she doesn’t blab. Not even the Captain. Happy happy happy Dreamy.

The northern trade with Golah Novak is already pretty important to Galadiahos’ economy. A few of the princes (the ones who mostly trade south) tried to get King Idroios to call off the escorts and make peace with the Ohians but half the court drinks nothing but finest Golahn Inje and the other half banquets on Kotac and everyone likes silver and amber so there was almost a riot until Idroios issued a royal proclamation stating that the Crown of Galadiahos and Olomon the Death of Drowning would stand by their treaty and protect the trade routes even if it involved going to war with the Ohians. The Ohians have been quite quiet over the last couple of years so presumably they are marshalling forces to try to conquer us or are planning a major raid on Galadiahos or something like that.

I made sure Samudera was safely away (I almost had to tie her up to get her back on Penjara actually) and waved goodbye to Harapse on the other ships before changing into drab sailor's garb and signing on to a ship heading up the coast. The Captain can’t be any more angry with me this year once he finds out what I’ve done so I decided to be Dreamy the Ranger for a while and a sneak into Zaketa and find out what was going on. I looked a total fright because I didn’t wash my hair at all and by the time we got there I looked more like a barbarian pirate than Princess Bidadari. A little subtle makeup made me look a bit thinner and I wore only a sailor’s patched and frayed garb.

I’ve had a lot of practice sneaking around shipyards lately and the ones at Zaketa looked busier than the Koronan ones but most of the ships were a bit primitive.("Last year’s hull shape, darling!"). I didn’t much like the look of the siege engines mounted on the big ones though and I made lots of sketches for Samudera even though I’m not much of an artist and I sent copies to Rapeezo as well in case I get caught. I’ve been avoiding all the temples because I can feel Ohia’s eyes on me and every snake in the damned queendom seems to have a go at fanging my ankle when I walk down the street so I’d better keep out of trouble. It looks like they’re going to be going back on the offensive soon.

The Captain has just given me a very mild chewing out for taking Samudera away and for not acting like the Lieutenant but I think even he knows that the Lieutenant Enviable is me and I’m like that so there’s not much point in getting all hoarse by shouting at me. He was very pleased with my spying though. He was even happier because we’d got some real help from Galadiahos this year- Idroios sent us a dozen engineers who have been working on improving the fortifications around Rumah and the entrances to the Sungai Jalan Induk. We have made sure that the Sungai Lohor stays unfortified except for hidden watchtowers. We’ve dredged that channels but only in a few places and if you sail up without knowing the route you’re going to get grounded.

Putera has had a good year too and we have doubled our archers because of her and now we have about a hundred trees as honorary brothers like we had in the real old times which I think is great even though Apotek and Prijekor laughed a bit behind Putera’s back. Mirtavac really jeered at her and she had to rush off before she burst into tears or smashed his face in. (Mirtavac thinks he’s tough but Putera could kill him in seconds. He really doesn’t see that and he’d better watch his step. I think a spell of guard duty in the leech swamps by Benteng Ambar is due for our Enviable Sergeant). But she got a formal commendation and a commission as a Ranger from the Captain and he presented her with a carving of Samudera that Jagal had made for her and she was luminous with joy for the rest of the week. About bloody time, T’Heros, about bloody time.

I was right about the Ohians by the way, they’ve stepped up the predations along the coast and we’ve lost a few ships beating them off this year. I think they’ll launch something bigger next year.

I couldn’t resist it. The day before midwinter I teased Putera and told her all about what Samudera had done in Galadiahos. She just carried on chewing her leaves like a placid metakeenos. I tried more and more to wind her up but she just kept nodding. I finished off with the story about the three princesses and the kavala feathers and the giant siput and how Samudera had to run for her life when their father broke down the door with a dozen guards at her back and she just said "Yes Dreamy but what did YOU do in Galadiahos this year??" with such an innocent look on her face that I blushed redder than a kemes uniform and spluttered and couldn’t say anything at all.

That’s when Samudera burst in with Harapse in one hand and big bottle of Inje in the other which she dumped all over me and Putera went for me ribs and tickled me until I couldn’t breathe from laughing and so much for Harapse not blabbing. I had only just got my breath back when they bundled me into some thick clothes and into a carriage and drove along the coast road until we met about half the Damai and almost the whole of the brigade at the edge of the lake and we had the biggest party ever.

I forgave Harapse almost right away and had the first dance with her and Putera and Samudera and they told me they hadn’t told anyone else and that last year’s party on midwinter was so good they thought everybody should join in and we danced until dawn and I was tired so I was standing at the edge of the lake when Aurora came up behind me and hugged me too so I knew it was really alright and I hadn’t screwed it all up.

It is nearly midwinter again, of year Eleven and the eighth year of King Idroios of Galadiahos. I have been away most of the year doing very dull things but anything would be dull after last year. We have had a lot of skirmishes with the Ohians and lost a few ships and a fair few brothers as well. They assaulted our new fortifications at the start of spring and managed to smash six months work in six days because those catapults I saw are not very nice when they get them set up and lash three boats together to make a stable platform.

We are actually quite lucky not to be under siege right now. They had Rumah under siege of course but I think they actually like it. They just pull the shields in and carry on as normal (I’ve never met a Rumahn who was happy outside the walls anyhow). But it is a mistake to sail past them as they discovered when half their priests and captains woke up dead one morning. They had obviously managed to improve their intelligence because they sailed most of their force up the Sungai Jalan Induk to attack Golah Novak itself. But their spies aren’t that good because they didn’t know we’d narrowed the course of the river in several stretches, so they couldn’t even turn around to flee when Saudagar (the first of Samudera’s hybrid Golahn/Pembelian/Galadiahan warships) blocked their way and the trees along the bank turned into archers and the infantry poured over the sides of the boats. The river ran red all the way to the sea.

It is a good job we dealt with the fleet fairly early in the year because in Autumn we had to deal with more migrating Yilani up in the mountains. There didn’t seem to be so many this time and they were pretty cautious and mostly just went around the valley. I suspect they wouldn’t have if the forts had been short-manned.

Putera had met up with Olok-Olok in spring and gone off into the mountains to complete Olok-Olok’s three-year mapping mission. We now have very good intelligence about the whole of our peninsula. On their way back south, they found some very strange corpses in the foothills. They were all shrivelled but they looked like really spiky poisonous centipedes with very nasty spines on their limbs and they were about five feet long and pale and slightly luminous. One of them still had some reflexes left despite being all shrivelled and its front claw caught Olok-Olok across the thigh and it blackened and swelled up. Putera had to carry him back and he nearly lost the leg but Pengodda saved it, but he’s had to retire and helps run the pub now.

Despite all this the year was very good for the farmers and the apple orchards gave us our first real bumper crop and we have had to build extra storehouses to keep it all.

Even better, Lumpius came back from the Pasar games this year with almost a whole Kemes clan in tow- they were Serak Kemes and they’d got fed up of fighting the Zuran Kemes over scrubland and had heard how great the city was from the cousin of the friend of their sister and had decided to decamp and join up. They were welcomed with open arms and trained and some of them are brothers already. And they know five new Inje recipes.

And I even managed to spend a few weeks in Galadiahos again this year.

It is the autumn of year twelve, the ninth year of King Idroios of Galadiahos. We’ve had a busy year again. And I’ve been buzzing all over and haven’t even gone south at all. It started at the end of winter when the bloody Kelana warriors decided that we were holding as slaves all their cousins and that it was time to throw off the yoke of oppression even though all their herds were healthy and they could all come and visit their family whenever they wanted. They started their usual hit-and-run on the amber forts and this time they started having a go at fishermen and farmers too. We started chasing them around and around trying to find out who was behind it. (They pretty much all were of course).

We had guarded ourselves pretty well against treachery and slave revolt but there is nothing much you can do sometimes. There were a few (surprisingly few) bloody murders in the city and a traitor killed Prijekor in his bed which suggests magic to me but Kanela unfortunately couldn’t trace it down. We beheaded all the slaves who had been involved but we confirmed with the goddess that nearly all the others were loyal so we didn’t have a purge or persecution or anything. We did finally put down the rebellion by killing enough of the warriors in the field though we didn’t sucker them into anything like a pitched battle this time. This is going to happen every time a new crop of nomad men get to be old enough to want to rape and conquer, I can see it.

More serious in many ways was that in the chaos of market days we have to deal with more and more Ohian spies and agitators. There are so many people here now and quite a few southerners that we can’t spot them and you can’t interrogate every newcomer no matter what Penggoda says. They’ve been poisoning wells and that’s what killed our other Sergeant- he and his troop were very hot and dusty after a skirmish with the Kelana and they really needed water so even though there were dead animals around Mirtavac tried the water for his men. Poisoning is a horrible way to die they say and I’m sorry I was so nasty about Mirtavac because he was my brother and he died trying to save his men. Half of them died of thirst before they could find a clean well.

That left us without an experienced Sergeant. Even if T’Heros had wanted to promote Putera she wasn’t there so he asked Vika to take over as Enviable Sergeant again to try to get rid of the poisoners and appointed Diri Sendiri as Sergeant Politicos which is sort of odd because she’s a Pagoth of the Damai and not really a city person but the Captain’s beginning to wake up to just how useful the honorary hundred tree brothers can be when you’re looking for spies and poisoners. Between them Vika and Diri Sendiri managed to hunt down most of the saboteurs.

The one they didn’t catch I want to find myself. He was selling scandalous and slanderous carvings of me wrapped around a giant phallus which I don’t find very funny no matter what the pub gossip is.

The other news is that Rasa has retired to start a family with Cipta who is a nice girl from Galadiahos. I’m really glad because I always felt a bit sorry that I didn’t feel about him how he felt about me but it does tend to work out best if you stay true to yourself like Harapse says. Halintar is taking over which is good although he’s more a civil engineer than a military one. Old Grumpy still seems to think he’s in charge of engineering though and I think Halintar is going to be less patient with that than Rasa was. After all, Halintar has the proper grammaticus education and everything.

Gosh has it really been a year? I don’t seem to have much time to write anymore. Still, it has taken a lot of work to reorganise the brigade this year. We’ve pretty much abandoned the heavy infantry in favour of light infantry and marines which seems to suit our kemes better (though they’re not very good sailors as a rule so most of the marines are pithekos). The Pagoth archers are now organised into squads like the infantry and the marines have their own per-ship organisation. We’ve redone the training programs and cross-train a lot more than we did so our infantry can ride and our cavalry can build catapults and everyone knows which ropes not to pull on ship. We’ve had to reorganise the farms a bit too but fortunately we only had to move half a dozen families and we gave them much bigger plots so they didn’t mind too much. The brigade’s strength is nearly four thousand in total now and the city and its environs including the tribes come to something over fifteen thousand we think.

I managed a longish summer in Galadiahos this year and found out some interesting things to tell Kanela about. He’s working on some projects which need a lot of research- it is worth the sorcerer’s while to keep on the good side of the Rangers even lapsed ones like me.

We’ve got to improve security again. Sekutu was killed by an assassin inside the citadel and although we got her it is bad to let your officers get killed. Maybe we should improve our officer fitness program too. Iena is going to take over (she’s one of the people Idroios sent from Galadiahos but I don’t really know her). Since we’ve mostly got rid of the poisoners and since her joints are getting a bit rheumatic from too long in the saddle Vika has stepped down again; Gelisah has taken over. I don’t know him at all. He’s from Pembelian and seems quite dashing.

I’m sorry I wrote so little last year. It wasn’t because I was busy it was because everything was really quiet. Anyway now it is the Year fifteen and the twelfth year of the reign of King Idroios of Galadiahos. The city is really a city now and Rasa although he’s retired from the company is still working hard and we put our heads together over the winter and have been redecorating and rebuilding some of the brigade buildings so the place looks a bit more elegant.

I’m going to be heading south to Galadiahos again as soon as the weather lifts. Lelang is coming with me, this time for good because he’s retiring and going to join "Uncle Rapeezo" in Korona and live a life of idle luxury which does have its appealing aspects. I sometimes wonder whether I should do the same and not have to be Enviable or Saintly any more but then I remember my secret and go and drink some Inje and dance with my friends and don’t think about it any more.

We seem to have got the Ohians mostly in check right now and I’m planning another ranger trip on the way back to scope out the possibilities of going on the attack. I gather the Ohians are having problems with bandit incursions in their lands too- how surprising I should know all about that!

Souvlia is taking over as Quartermaster Politicos of course (and everyone is complaining about all these bossy women in charge). Uyuz is an unlikely Enviable Quartermaster since he’s a nomad and most of them only know about Kavala and fleas, but actually Uyuz is quite nice, very quiet. For a change he doesn’t seem to find me at all scary but he is positively terrified of Samudera so I hope she doesn’t start making too many unreasonable shipbuilding requisitions and take advantage of his inexperience.

It is coming up for midwinter again and it’s my turn to organise the party. I decided that we’d done lots of Damai things in the last few years so this year we are going to have a giant Pemburu beach party. Lumpius and Plesacica and I have been Kotac-catching for weeks (the sea is still quite warm but I go blue and bumpy the moment I get out). One of our old ships has got a bit beyond repair so we are going to have a proper boat burning funeral in the bay as well. And you’d never have thought it but quiet little Uyuz turns out to be the most superb dancer you ever saw and that includes all those Kemes bigheads too. The four of us have been working on a sword dance and I really am beginning to get old because I feel so slow and I’ve managed to get nicks in half my practice shirts but it is going to be a really good midwinter party.

Well it was a memorable party after all. I think a nameless medical person might have slipped something in the drinks because we’ve got half a dozen new romances to gossip about but the real news is that The Captain found himself dragged around the bonfire all night by Diri Sendiri and some traditional Pagoth midwinter dancing and some more Inje served up by Pengodda and somehow they’ve got engaged!!!

I told you it was memorable! I don’t think anyone imagined the Captain would ever fall for anyone, let alone a sergeant who is half lime tree (I told you they were fun). I’ve got some real work to do sorting out the wedding ceremony because they’re getting married in the spring and I need to get cloth and gold and olive oil and some new kedros and the best fish and some special emeralds to make Diri’s circlet and everything. We’re going to have to come up with some new dances and I think Okretan and Kita (who are getting married this year as well) will have to help me out because I’m busy trying to design all the dresses and uniforms and I don’t think I can do the dances too. Rasa has been putting his head together with Miran and I don’t think the Captain’s wedding bed will be quite what he might be expecting.

I can’t write too much now because I’ve been crying again and the ink will run but the wedding went really well and when Lunak said the blessing in front of the whole brigade and Aurora’s hands appeared around the Captain’s and Diri’s I don’t think there was a dry eye in the whole place.

I’ve been off spying again for most of the year and somehow it is nearly midwinter again and year sixteen is nearly upon us. I don’t think we’re going to be able to top last year’s whatever so it is going to be lots of smaller parties rather than a big one I think. We’re going back to our cave again and I’ve promised that I won’t leave them this time which I’m in two minds about but I really ought to try it once and they are my best friends after all and I hope I don’t spoil anything.

It is spring of year sixteen, year thirteen of King Idroios of Galadiahos.

It is a good job I got some good information in Ohia last year because we were mostly ready for what the snake goddess sent against. We managed to smash most of their forces at the gap in a pincer with the Galadiahans sailing out of the east and us sailing out of the west where we had been hiding in those bays that Olok-Olok spent so long mapping for us. Their master plan to poison the Kotac I hadn’t found out about and it might have worked except that the poison they used proved lethal to Kotac but the world’s greatest appetite inducer and aphrodisiac to the Majka Usche and a wooden Ohian warship is no match for a hungry horny Majka Usche. I gather that not a man survived. Pengodda says he knows what the stuff was and has filed it away for future use.

I didn’t get any chance to go south myself this year but one of our new rangers, Merek, reported that the whole queendom is on a war footing again. We need to deal with their shipyards soon and we need to establish a bit more of a spying network. And I think I’m going to have to hand over to another Annalist before too long because I’m not keeping up.

The Captain has been very interested in me in since I got back and not because he’s finally fallen for my well-turned ankles (at least I don’t think so and Diri would wrap him up in creepers if she caught him trying it on). He asked me over for a few glasses of Inje with Putera and Samudera and asked all sorts of questions about the goddess which I think I answered but I had had a few too many and anyway Vika was in the corner making snide comments which lose their effectiveness when delivered in a parade-ground bellow but no-one ever accused Vika of being subtle. The Captain seems to be fascinated by why it is that Aurora is friendly to me (I could have told him but I’m sure he wouldn’t have understood anyway).

He tried to find out a bit more about me as well but I wasn’t that drunk. A few days later he got Old Grumpy to try to Annalist strong-arm on me to find out even more about me. Anyway, Old Grumpy wasn’t best pleased at the job and I wasn’t going to tell him anything because I think it would spoil the mystery. But in the end I owned up and admitted that I’d come from Galadiahos which anyone with half an education could have spotted just from reading these Annals anyway. When he came back the second time I told him a little more and he kept talking about me writing my autobiography which I suppose would be like a prequel to these Annals. I think it would remove the mystery but it could be fun and Harapse says it is a good swashbuckling story of derring-do so if you want to find out more about me you’ll have to wait until I’ve had time to write it.

Something very odd has happened today which I don’t think the Captain is going to let me in on, but Kanela doesn’t seem to be here any more and Jagal is now officially company sorceror (even though he should really be chief artist or something. He did these really brilliant pictures of me and Harapse and Samudera and Putera which I will stick in here if I can persuade him to make some little copies for me). He’s even got a few apprentices ready so I think something has been going on while I’ve been away. The other change in officers is Apotek, who has retired and is planning to become a farmer which isn’t really surprising as he was always one of the most keen on settling down. Diri Sendiri is going to take over as Lieutenant Politicos and that’s caused a little bit of mutter of favouritism but that’s just nonsense as she’s great at the job and everyone knows it. Speerto is the new Sergeant Politicos, he’s an ex-Galadhian who really likes his Inje which is why he moved closer to the source. So long as he doesn’t overindulge he is a superb soldier and possibly the first transfer from the Indigo Brigade of the Rainbow Guard to the Red Brigade in the last few centuries.

I’ve got to plan a campaign of political horribleness in Ohia next year which isn’t my forte at all but there isn’t anyone else to do it right now. The Captain had a bout of Malaria last summer and he’s beginning to show his age a bit and he’s even started to mutter about stepping down in a serious tone rather than a complaining one when he wants us to all shut up and get on with it. Harapse thinks the reason that Captain has been so interested in me is that he thinks I am likely to be elected Captain when he steps down. I don’t know about that I think it could be awkward.

Vika has just been sent off on some top-secret hush hush mission (which I think is a bit like trying to teach a Kedros to play the rope-balancing game but what do I know?). She’s gone off with a group of like-minded reprobates which I must say has improved the atmosphere in Vreeo’s (both in ambience and more importantly odour). Half the city seems to have breathed a sigh of relief now they’ve gone. My only concern is that they’ve taken Penjara which is very old-fashioned now but I still think assigning Vika is a cruel way to retire an old ship.

It turns out T’Heros was very serious about me being Captain and he even looks like he’s planning to step down for real in a few months. I had to have a long think about it but thinking about it doesn’t usually help so Putera dragged me off into her room and Samudera brought Harapse and we all talked about it over a very civilised meal of Menerima steamed over charcoal loaded with coriander leaves followed by sea-penjaga in metakeenos egg omelette with lots of garlic so it was a good job we all ate it (except Harapse but she doesn’t have a nose so it doesn’t bother her). It’s strange how all those life-and-death decisions are so easy but this is so hard.

This will be the last entry in my Annals. It is just after midwinter so this is year seventeen of the City of Golah Novak and year fourteen of King Idroios of Galadiahos. For a long time I didn’t know what I was going to do when T’Heros stepped down if the brigade really decided it wanted me as Captain. T’Heros stepped down in the autumn at the Great Fair and they held an election for Captain just afterwards. I nearly didn’t go to the meeting because I was too nervous and I still didn’t know what I was going to do and I didn’t even know what I was going to wear. In the end I just wore my long boots and someloose sailing trousers and an opal-white silk shirt that Rapeezo had sent for me on the last trade ship of the summer.

It has been a long time since all our officers have stood together on a platform before the brigade. Last time we did we had to shout so everyone could hear. This time Jagal had to ensorcell the whole parade ground because we really are an army not just a brigade now. T’Heros’ stepping-down speech was pretty short. He had some notes so I’m going to stick them in rather than try to write it all down from memory. Then Jagal took charge of the meeting and told the brigade that we needed to elect a new Captain, and did anyone have any nominations? Silence. I’ve had thousands of people looking at me before but never like that. Jagal said "Dreamy, are you willing to stand as a Candidate for Captain?" and I discovered that there wasn’t a decision to be made after all. They said that they really did hear the roar as far away as Rumah. I was glad when Sentomos nominated Samudera and Kohlazo nominated Diri and Lebur nominated Rasa but then Samudera said that she would leave the brigade rather than stand against me and Diri said that she would be going with her husband into peaceful retirement and Rasa blushed bright red and said that he wouldn’t stand against me either. So in the end it was only me and Gelisah, who nominated himself (and I could have kissed him but he was at the other end of the platform).

So now I am Captain of the Red Brigade of the City of Golah Novak. It took the next few months to get everything in order and I decided not to try to hurry everything so I didn’t address the brigade until midwinter because I’d been planning to do something special this year and being made Captain wasn’t going to spoil my big party. Word had got around that Dreamy was planning something, but not even I was quite expecting everybody who came. Rapeezo and Lelang I had been expecting, but Stutter and Kanela I don’t think I could have found if I’d tried for months. Of course Aurora did have a hand in it and Samudera later admitted to having asked her to make sure. Even Vika and her unshaven pirates were there (though I think Vika had to be dragged along by the rest of the detachment swearing all the way).

Every living brother had made the journey. Every one. From Galadiahos, from Pembelian, from Pasar, however far, everyone had come to the parade ground of Golah Novak and stood in the snow on a bare hillside in the light of dawn and stood there waiting for me to say something.

I hardly looked like me at all. I had my hair tied back and bound with a simple black silk sash. I was wearing a heavy black metakeenos-leather cloak which was so huge it covered me completely. I stood in front of my brothers and sisters by the unlit bonfires and I whispered a rare little prayer undermy breath: "Dear sister, please don’t let me fuck this up."

This time I did remember my speech.

"Brothers and Sisters, the last time we stood in the snows in the light of dawn together was one of the blackest days in our history."

"Today, we stand in the snows of our homeland in the city we have built with our own hands. So much has changed since the blackest day! We were so frightened of the future. When you have so little the prospect of loss is unbearable. But we were brave that day, we embraced change in hope and we worked and we strained and we strove and we did what had to be done, because we are soldiers. So much has changed! We are four thousand strong. We live in houses of stone girded by city walls and eat feasts and send ships to the corners of the world to do our bidding. But still we fear and we wonder whether we have really gained or have we just failed to notice our loss? So much has changed! Few of us even know the names of all our brothers and sisters any more. We are guarded by a goddess, but jealous and vengeful serpents beat at our doors. Have we really grown? Or have we just admitted the vipers into our midst?"

"And now we have the latest change. Captain T’Heros, who has guided us through the most turbulent passage in our tumultuous history, has stepped down and finally can enjoy life and love with Diri. We have many officers, but wars and time have taken their toll and most are quite newly come to their office. Few remain that stood on the mountaintop that black day and watched Vreeo smash the Serpent’s Eye. We havemany new brothers and sisters and we need new officers to stiffen our backbones. We need experience and need youth but most of all we need talent. Therefore my officers will be as follows:"

"Lieutenant Politicos- Samudera." (A stifled yelp and a glowering fire which implied I was in for a bit of plate throwing when she caught me.)

"Lieutenant Zeleea – Putera." (Some mutterings in the cheap seats. Sod them. They’ll see.)

"Sergeant Politicos – Gelisah." (Some surprise. Don’t they realise I need someone with real backbone in that job?)

"Sergeant Zeleea – Plesacica." (I didn’t know Kemes blushed.)

"Quartermaster Politicos – Souvlia." (Few disappointed grumbles because they’d hoped a new boy would be an easier touch).

"Quartermaster Zeleea - Uyuz."

"Engineer Politicos – Halintar."

"Engineer Zeleea – Iena." (No surprises there).

"Naval Engineer and Admiral of the Fleet – Hasapikos." (A few gasps because Hasapikos comes from Kadra but he’s been commanding the Southern Fleet for years and while he isn’t really an engineer he knows what the warships need to have).

"Chaplain Politicos – Lunak."

"Swordmaster Politicos – Lumpius."

"Swordmaster Enviable – Treskati. "(A few cheers from the Pemburu section- local boy makes good.)

I got them all up to the front rank and ignored the little darts of flame coming from Samudera’s nostrils. Then I continued with my speech.

"And then there is Dreamy."

"Cute Ajal the street-kid everyone laughed at when she knocked on the barracks door in Merah and politely asked if she could join. Pretty Ajal the Ranger who everyone toasted when she got her Ranger’s badge. Saint Dreamy the ghost-killer who everyone says personally saved him on the Rakhokalia charnel fields. Enviable Dreamy the flamboyant Annalist who everybody wanted to come home so they could read all about her latest adventure. Lieutenant Dreamy the bold heroine who steals necklaces and castrates gods who everybody thought was just a little bit divine and just a little scary. And now Captain Dreamy who everybody thought was going to be in charge whether she wanted to or not."

"I am not Captain T’Heros."

"I am not pretty little Ajal."

"I’m not Saint Dreamy, and I’m not even Enviable any more."

"I’m just me."

"I will be your Captain, but I won’t be your Saint or your Saviour or a quiet calm on the waters. And above all, remember, I’ll still be me."

I took the silk band off and shook my hair loose. Then I shrugged the heavy dark cloak off my shoulders and let it drop. Underneath I was wearing a cascading scarlet silk shirt that was cut very loose for dancing and soft yearling-hide trousers bleached whiter than the snow and fur-topped boots and a soldier’s belt with a mother-of-pearl buckle.

A tall person stepped out from behind the bonfire and came up behind me. He was shrouded in a dark cloak too. He spoke in a deep, clear voice.

"Soldiers of the Red Brigade, much has indeed changed. Guided by Captain T’Heros, you have ridden the tempest and become one with the storm. Your curse has become your blessing. Thanks to him, you have a new home at last. But change does not always require that you lose that which you once had. Through the actions of the woman you have chosen to lead you, something which was lost has been regained."

He shrugged off his cloak. I don’t think anyone else noticed that it caught a bit and nearly tripped him up, because they were too surprised to see the King of Galadiahos standing before them in full royal regalia. Putera slipped in behind him and placed the Crown of the Kings of Korona on his brow. He raised his hand and showed them the parchment he held.

"Here is the royal command granting the Red Brigade an honourable discharge from service to the Kingdom of Galadiahos. Many of you know of its existence, but I thought to take advantage of this unique day where you stand as united in presence (as you always have done in spirit) to deliver it in person." (A bit thick that bit I thought but I suppose he’s had more practice than me so he probably knew what he was doing).

"This change does not mean that our long relationship is ended. Far from it! Golah Novak and Galadiahos stand together as allies against the world and we will remember long faithful service and forget bitter exile and be steadfast friends."

"You have chosen this woman to be your Captain because you believe her to be the best of you." (Kings are used to ignoring heckles from loudmouthed oafs like Vika). "I understand why you have chosen her. I chose her too. Cara, will you reaffirm our marriage vows before your brothers and sisters?"

Even though I was expecting it and trying hard not to cry I couldn’t help it so I just had to nod. Lunak conducted the brief ceremony and we swore the vows again and Idroios put the crown of the Queen of Korona on my head for the first time ever and pronounced me Queen Cara of Galadiahos and I was shaking so much the crown nearly fell off and when he took my hands and Aurora encircled them too I was crying but it was so cold the tears were freezing on my cheeks. I don’t remember much else except that he kissed me and I melted into his arms like a fainting maid instead of the gruff Captain of an army four thousand strong.

I just about managed to pull myself together in time for the last part of my speech because it was the most important of all. Idroios and the others stepped out to the parade ground and left me standing all on my own in between the big cold bonfires. Slowly, silence fell.

"Brothers and Sisters, so much has changed since our blackest day! We have grown, yet we are still brothers and sisters. We have a home and yet we are still free to roam the world. We are the Exiled Red Brigade of Galadiahos no more, yet we are and will always remain uniquely ourselves. And this is why."

"I swear to honour my brothers and sisters of the Exiled Red Brigade of the Rainbow Guard" (I let them catch up and we carried on together) " to fight at their side, to defend them as they will defend me, to support no outsider against the interests of the brigade" (eyes were widening because of the glowing form of Aurora standing in the front rank with the officers and speaking out loud in unison with her brothers and sisters) "to give whatever is asked of me, even my life, to obey the orders of the officers of the brigade and the Captain of the brigade whatever those orders might be, to honour the eight deaths" (eyes wider still as eight figures of mist and falling sunset hang in the sky behind me) " and Ohros the Pale whose wisdom brought the brigade into being and whose sword guides us still" (The touch of a cold metal sword-blade on my shoulder).

The bonfires exploded into light and I danced with a King and Nine Gods and from the edge of the firelight Spatlos tipped his hat at me before snatching Putera from Samudera’s outraged grasp, laughing as he whirled her off into the darkness.