Free The Cold Commands (v5.0) (html) by Richard K Morgan - [A Land Fit for Heroes 02] Page A

kind of serious training again soon, the most exercise he’d had for months now was Imrana—then he turned and surveyed the long blank walls of the building behind him.

    The Combined Irregulars barracks—rows of slit windows along the upper levels, sliced view of the parade ground quadrangle beyond the tall iron gates. Figures already moved there in the shielded gloom, pairs of them in stylized, repetitive combat motions while a drill instructor’s voice bellowed exasperated abuse.

    Egar grinned at the sound, and went to announce himself.

    The five halberdiers on the gate were Imperial Sons of the Desert, scarified southerners to a man, slim and almost desert-dark enough that you might have mistaken them for Kiriath until you looked in their eyes. Egar met their young, ordinary stares one by one as he rolled up, identified the squad sergeant by his sash, and gave the man a friendly nod.

    “Here to see Commander Darhan,” he said breezily. “Tell him it’s the Dragonbane.”

    It got him startled glances, and exactly the response he wanted. The sergeant made an almost involuntary bow and gestured at one of his men to carry the word. Watching, Egar wondered idly what these particular desert sons made of the whole Demlarashan mess. The ritual scars on their cheeks were a good sign—it was a practice frowned upon by the Citadel—and they all seemed comfortable enough in their brand-new rig, which was certainly not what he’d been led to expect. The court gossip Imrana had fed him recently was laced with references to the renamedregiment—the previous
Holy
Sons of the Desert was now deemed a little too ambiguous in its implications for loyalty—and tales were rife of devout officers refusing to wear or subtly defacing the newly ordered colors.

    Yeah, well. Court gossip. Like fucking old women around a campfire
.

    “Eg?” A delighted bellow from the gate. “Eg the fucking dragon spanker? Get in here, man! Where you been? Thought you were off working bouncer for some cut-rate whorehouse or something, found your level at last.”

    Darhan the Hammer, corpulent but still imposing in his padded black instructor’s gear, beard trimmed down to something approaching a groomed appearance, graying hair bound back in a ponytail. He propped the gate open with one hand, held a wooden staff casually in the other. Egar moved through the loose cordon of the halberdiers and raised a fist in greeting. Darhan bumped it with his own, and Egar saw his knuckles on that hand were torn up and bleeding. He nodded at the damage as he went in.

    “Nice job. What’s the matter, old man? Recruits getting too fast for you?”

    Darhan snorted. “Yeah, little fuck thought he was. He’s lying down now, reconsidering. Little lesson in pain management.”

    “Majak?”

    “Yeah, and worse yet, he’s a runty little Skaranak just like you were.” Behind the calculated tribal slur, the fierce old grin. “What do they do to you Eastland herdboys up there, Eg? Barely dropped out between their mother’s legs, they all think they got a map to the whole fucking world and everything in it.”

    “Called pride, Darh. Course, I wouldn’t expect a soft, city-dwelling Ishlinak twat like you to understand that.”

    “Oh, city dwelling, is it?” The Majak instructor dropped his staff with a clatter, put up fists in a mock-guard. “Old twat is it?”

    “Well you
call
that pile of hovels down by the river a city, but … ”

    “Mouthy fucking whelp!” Darhan threw a joke-slow punch at Egar’s head. Egar blocked and grabbed, and the two of them clinched and wrestled about in the gateway like a couple of young buffalo bulls in mating season. The southern guardsmen looked on with a uniformlysober lack of expression—they didn’t get it at all. Why would they? You had to be Majak to understand. Back on the steppes, Ishlinak-to-Skaranak, you couldn’t talk like this without blades coming out. But the first thing Darhan the Hammer bashed