Sayri's Whisper: The Great Link Book 1

by Daniel J. Rothery

  Elsano laughed, then sobered quickly, checking to make certain he hadn’t offended Arad. Seeing no reaction, he answered quickly. “Cavalry would be at a disadvantage in the steep terrain. Even if he could win, I don’t think Lukos would be willing to take the losses. Not anymore,” he added as an afterthought.

  Arad gave him a questioning look, but Elsano only shrugged. He clearly didn’t want to disparage a fellow officer. Arad nodded in comprehension, taking the moment to appreciate the loyalty Elsano demonstrated.

  “Please send for Captain Lukos,” he said finally. Elsano bowed politely, bending a knee, and Arad returned the gesture, then the captain departed.

  Sitting down on his locker, Arad tightened the straps on his boots as he considered. Lukos was a proud man, but he was disillusioned with the campaign on the island. Elsano’s unspoken word told him that Lukos had placed the well-being of his men above the success of the mission.

  Lukos had two weaknesses, then; pride, and a fear of losing. They seemed contradictory. How to take advantage? How to trigger his temper, and entice him to insubordination so severe that Arad could justify removing him?

  It was a pretty puzzle.

  Arad thought back to his days as a student of krakar in the North Province, to days of practice along the Wall, with the town of North Garrison in the distance and brown-orange floodplain stretching out forever to the east. Master Win Wal would drill him endlessly on clear, cool winter days, when snow might occasionally appear on the treetops and hills to the northeast, and the days ended early and the nights were cold enough that they slept in furs. At least, they did until he built a brick oven in their modest home; after that, Ooji would run the fire in it continuously, cooking and heating the house at the same time. Afternoon winter practice would end in front of the warm bricks, his fingers curled around a hot cup of tea.

  The memories brought a smile to his face, and calmed him. The constant thrum of rain on the tent’s roof became relaxing in that moment, instead of stressful, and he found his quiet place, his centre.

  From the calm came the voice of his master, the words Win Wal would say in moments of frustration when he found himself defeated again and again in practice. In the words, he found the solution to his dilemma.

  When the enemy seems impenetrable, do not seek his weakness. Offer him the chance to demonstrate his strength, and he will also show you his vulnerability.

  The tent flap parted, and Captain Lukos entered. He did not announce himself, and did not request permission to enter. This was not in itself a disrespect; the tent was after all, a command centre, and the captains all had the right to enter it. Since it also served as Arad’s personal space, however, a subtle insult was communicated. Arad chose to ignore it.

  “Arad,” Lukos greeted him with a nod.

  “Captain Lukos,” Arad replied, more respectfully. He intended to start this meeting off by putting the man off his guard.

  Lukos raised an eyebrow for a fleeting second, then his face returned flat. “I heard you were interested in speaking to me. I’m going to return to my camp this afternoon, but since I planned on meeting all of the captains before departing, it seemed prudent to include you.”

  “I appreciate that, Captain,” Arad replied. “I know how busy you are, and the responsibility your men are carrying at the front. Can I offer you wine?” He motioned to the vessel on the table, in the gesture offering Lukos a chair.

  The respectful tone worked the desired effect, and Lukos ran his tongue over his teeth as he considered the wine. He shrugged and pulled out a chair to sit. “A glass of wine can be warming, but despite the weather, a man needs to stay refreshed. Join me,” he motioned to a chair for Arad.

  Arad nodded appreciation and sat, then poured wine for Lukos, then himself. It was not watered. Lukos sipped at it appreciatively, then took a healthy swallow, excess dribbling down the beard at the sides of his mouth. “What did you wish to discuss, Arad?”

  Watching Lukos carefully, Arad took a swallow of the wine himself and placed the metal cup on the table. “Are your soldiers doing well, Captain? Especially in the poor weather? It’s tough duty for them,” he observed. He wasn’t quite ready to challenge Lukos, so he continued to politely probe. Allow him to show his strengths.

  “They’re a tough lot,” Lukos snorted. “You need not worry about them. The enemy scouts us, when they can, but they don’t dare come down off their mountain. We’d massacre them,” he added boastfully.

  “I imagine so,” Arad agreed. “Just a matter of time for them, I suppose. They can’t last forever up there.”

  Lukos shrugged. “They have supplies, we can’t stop that; the inlets north are too hard to navigate, and the Overlord doesn’t see fit to blockade them. Why, I can’t imagine,” he added with irritation.

  “Nor I,” Arad nodded. “Seems like you’ve got them pinned down. Stop the ships, and they’d just die off.”

  Lukos frowned. “Precisely.” He took up his cup, and drained it, then tilted it toward Arad, who filled it. “There’s really no point to you being here. It’s a shut job.”

  Arad shrugged. “Not my decision, Captain. My father tells me where to go. I suppose I’m here to learn from you captains.” He hoped that last wasn’t too obvious; Lukos wasn’t stupid.

  The Captain laughed, however, and stroked his beard. “Well that’s not a bad thing. Not much left to learn now, though. The rest of the army could leave, for all I care. I’ll hold the rebels there until they realize its pointless and leave, or come down and run under our hooves. We’ve won this battle; we cavalry.” He was slurring a bit; despite his earlier implication, Arad guessed he had already been drinking. He also concluded that the time was ripe to play his hand. Lukos had shown his weakness; pride in victory. He had lost his sense of duty, and his loyalty to the empire was in question. It seemed he had one thing left to him as a soldier and an officer; winning. He wanted to win, and he wanted credit for it, if perhaps only in the eyes of his men. He wanted to be the hero.

  “I have no doubt of it, Captain,” Arad said, putting his cup down. He had not partaken of the wine, despite appearances to the contrary. “It’s really unfortunate that my father doesn’t have the patience for that.”

  “What?” Lukos said, frowning at him, his cup held halfway up to his mouth. “What do you mean?”

  “As you’ve said, Captain, I’m just a precept and I have no place telling you Captains your business. My only purpose here is to decide whether or not the general campaign is going according to my father’s wishes. He wants a quick victory, not a drawn-out campaign.” He paused, watching Lukos carefully; the man’s jaw was tight, and he was skewering Arad with his eyes. Arad judged it was the perfect moment to hit him hard. “I think I’ll recommend that the cavalry be pulled back. Your men need a rest. We’ll send the infantry up into the mountains to finish the job; with superior numbers it should be over quickly.”

  Lukos stared at him for a long moment, his features etched in fury. Then he stood suddenly and hurled the metal cup to the floor of the tent, where it bounced ineffectively, spraying wine across the dirty canvas. “You planned this!” he accused, wide eyes focused on Arad.

  “Of course not, Captain. I’ve simply accepted the only course of action,” Arad replied calmly, still sitting, his arms on the table in front of him.

  “Only course of—” Lukos had his fists clenched at his sides. “Lies! You intended all along to relieve me of my duty, to deprive me of my rightful victory!”

  “Your rightful victory, Captain? What do you mean? The Commander-General’s victory, you mean? The Overlord’s victory?” Arad was speaking quickly now, his gaze playing down across the table, avoiding Lukos. “You’ve worked your men long enough. Surely you don’t mind giving way for others to finish the job?” He sipped at his wine casually, though his heart was pounding; he wanted Lukos to believe him to be the ultimate fop, a patrician who cared nothing for the common soldier. The fighting man’s worst enemy, and most despicable
foe.

  The collapse of Lukos’ restraint was nearly audible. He snorted, actually stomping a foot on the ground, then lunged across the room at Arad. It caught Arad by surprise; he had expected the man to start shouting first. As it was, he twisted to the side in reflex, and that only due to his ingrained krakar training. Lukos crashed into the table as Arad dodged away, falling on his back. The captain leapt to his feet immediately, and charged again; Arad brought his hands up to protect himself, but deliberately left an opening between them. Lukos saw it, hurling a blow directed at Arad’s face, who clenched his teeth and took it on the nose. He staggered over backwards under the force of the blow, falling on his back, but readied for what came next.

  As expected, Lukos moved over top of him, intending to rain down blows. Arad felt hot blood running down his cheeks. He hooked Lukos’ left foot from behind with his right heel, then brought his left knee up and slammed it down on the man’s left thigh. The trip worked perfectly, and Lukos dropped on his back heavily. Arad quickly captured the captain’s foot under his arm and twisted up firmly; Lukos let out a cry of pain.

  Several men charged into the tent then, Elsano among them. They tackled the irate officer and subdued him. Moments later Lukos was dragged off, trussed up and screaming insults at him like a madman.

  Arad was left alone to clean the blood off his face, and contemplate how he had just ruined an officer’s career to further his own ends.

  No—not for his own benefit. To keep Sayri alive.

  He knew it wasn’t the worst he would do.

  ・

  “Well, you have your wish, Captain. Lukos is done; he won’t command again. I will recall and redistribute his men amongst the other companies to avoid dissent. The way is clear,” Arad concluded.

  They were standing atop the cliffs facing south, breakers rhythmically pounding the beach far below. The sea air was salty and humid; the rain had stopped, as abruptly as it had begun, and the flooding groundwater had vanished almost as quickly. It seemed that the island had its own system of redistributing water, proportional to the outpours common here. Though the grass and mossy turf remained damp, somehow the water had drained away.

  It was a boon for plans of battle. Soldiers could not march if their feet sank into the ground, and horses certainly could not charge. Arad had half expected the storm to be followed by days of rest or more, but the island had other plans. By mid-afternoon following the deluge, the weather was no longer a factor.

  In fact, the sun had emerged and the sky cleared completely; though the air was still humid—thick, even—the afternoon was sunny and clear.

  Captain Josel gazed out across the sea to the south, where it faded into the sky in a hazy blue-green blur. “That was well played, Master Arad. I hadn’t expected you to accomplish it so quickly.” He stroked his moustache contentedly.

  Arad sighed. “Nothing to be proud of, Captain Josel. Captain Lukos may have lost his perspective, but he is still a good officer—and a good man. I will find a way to send him home without disgrace.”

  “It may not matter,” Josel replied, his tone dark. “Lukos had already lost his sense of duty to the state. Now his fury at you may well have made him useless to it. I don’t expect him to recover.”

  Arad frowned at the Captain for a moment, then turned away from the sea and looked back across the island to the mist-covered hills in the northeast. A few tufts of cloud still hung there, no doubt fed by warm rain being drawn up from the thick jungles on the slopes. The rebels wouldn’t see the sky yet, if they were camped halfway up. At the top, their view would be a spectacular ceiling of blue sky and mysterious floor of delicate white cloud.

  For a moment Arad wished he was up there with them. He would rather, he realized, stand alongside the Lords’ Landers in a futile fight to resist his father, than be leading his army to victory.

  Those are Sayri’s people up there, he reminded himself. Sayri had two brothers; what if one had traveled to the South Island, and was up there now waiting to die at his hands? Would he kill her brother in saving her?

  He shivered at the thought. Best not think of that.

  Josel was studying the island now, too, but with a different eye than that Arad held. His was narrow and thoughtful, even predatory. “There is an area along the northwest coast where the forest reaches the sea,” he began, stretching his hand out as if to lift that piece above the surrounding landscape and present it to Arad. “The shoreline is flat and wide there. One of the best landing places I’ve seen on the island. The rebels won’t know of it; they haven’t had access to that area since their initial retreat.”

  Arad nodded. He wasn’t sure where Josel was going with this—Lukos’ men held the forest already, anyway, though he had plans to pull them out—but he could see that the Captain was wrapped up in his vision of the battlefield, and didn’t wish to disturb him.

  “Horsemen are ineffective on steep mountainous terrain. The rebel commander knows this, so he keeps to the hills and bides his time. So long as the ships from his homeland aren’t blockaded, he can hold out indefinitely.” Josel played his fingers along the ridge as if touching it the hilltops. “It’s an impenetrable fortress,” he added.

  Arad watched the man; he seemed almost in a daze, surely seeing the entire scenario in his mind’s eye. He had imagined that Josel was a capable strategist; that much was evident in his confidence at their first meeting. Now, however, Arad wondered—was he in the presence of a visionary? He had studied under some brilliant instructors in his youth, but had never seen a man so immersed in his own strategic vision.

  “If the cavalry launches a mass attack up the mountainside, the rebel commander will believe that Lukos has lost his patience. That he has decided the losses worth a quick victory,” Josel was saying. “But the charge will fail. The losses will be severe, and swift. The cavalry will be forced to pull back, down to the forest. The enemy will rejoice—but they won’t stop there.” He shook his head slowly, his eyes tracing a line down to the forest, and beyond to the plains.

  “Their scouts report that our main force is still at the encampment near the sea,” he said, suddenly shifting into the present tense, as though it was unfolding as he spoke. “They have time to finish the fight. The advantage the horsemen hold in the forest isn’t enough. They try to rally and strike back at the rebels coming down off the mountain, but they are in disarray, disorganized and demoralized. It’s going to be a slaughter. The cavalry commander sounds a general retreat, to pull back to the coast. The rebels rejoice; they have soundly defeated the cavalry. Their commander orders them to give up chase and regroup, to avoid being too stretched thin. Most of his men have drifted out to the southern edges of the forest, and beyond. He moves down into the forest to facilitate a quicker regrouping.”

  Arad watched Josel in amazement. The Captain’s eyes were glossed over; though he was staring out across the island, he was seeing something other than what Arad did. A ghostly re-enactment of a battle that was yet to take place. He was time-traveling, in his mind.

  “But they have made a critical error. The enemy has landed a sizeable infantry force at the edge of the forest, along the northwest shoreline. Before the rebels can pull back, the enemy moves along the base of the mountains behind them. When the rebel commander grasps what has occurred, he orders his men to form up inside the forest, and prepare to fight a pitched battle. The enemy is, at least, pinned against the hillside, and will have little room to maneuver. So he imagines,” Josel added gleefully, his eyes wide in an almost maniacal thrill as his gaze shifted back toward the grassy field between the Somrian encampment and the forest. “But the cavalry—what’s left of them—hasn’t flown, but only retreated. They were expecting this development. They wheel and charge.” He smacks his fist against his open palm. “With the enemy infantry at their back and the cavalry charging at them through the light forest, the rebels are caught between the onrushing tide and the coastal cliffs,” he mused. “They are decimated by the horsemen th
is time. They are trapped between two superior forces. As the rebel commander struggles to hold off the enemy on two fronts, his scouts report the main body of the enemy infantry moving as well, across the fields of gold, to finish the job. To glory,” he concluded.

  After a moment, Josel’s eyes refocused, and he turned to Arad. “We can’t lose, Master Arad. The only obstacle was Lukos’ unwillingness to retreat, and to suffer the losses necessary to win.”

  Arad frowned at that, his eyes cast down. Was he prepared to suffer those losses? Not to mention the mass of deaths among the enemy?

  Josel moved close, examining his face. His eyes, Arad now saw, were green, extremely rare in Somria. “Every commander must grapple with this, Master Arad. If a war is to be fought, someone must die. But have heart,” he went on, smiling sadly. “A sudden victory will mean fewer to die in the long term. And end to violence, to war. Victory means peace.”

  Arad nodded sadly. Josel was correct, of course. And he was, as Arad had expected, a strategic genius. There was no denying his vision. It was an unstoppable plan.

  “Prepare your men, Captain Josel. I am granting you a field commission to Captain-General, with authority over our entire army, over the entire island. Win this war,” he finished, gritting his teeth against the guilt that gripped his throat as he spoke the words, “and bring us peace. May the sacrifices of the dead be worth it.”

  37 GALLORD-SMIT

  “Front-Captain?”

  Gallord-Smit blinked awake.

  The voice was outside his tent—or, at least, the tent Hellamer had allocated for his use. Four island defenders had been shuffled into larger tents, crowding them, but Gallord-Smit would have insulted the Right-Precept by refusing after the fact. Besides, men were accustomed to making room for their superiors; it might even help morale, by putting the men with their fellows and giving them the chance to brag that the Front-Captain, well known as he was among them, was using their former tent.