Wartorn: Resurrection w-1

by Robert Asprin

  Yes ... that and all the fabulous, wonderful, glorious sex they were having! That, too, had settled and centered her.

  Over the blur of the past several days so much had changed. And yet she was still ardently pursuing the massive assignment Master Honnis had burdened her with. It was an intellectual challenge she welcomed, yes, but still it was onerous.

  However, that her elderly mentor had chosen her made her... proud.

  Master Honnis was still receiving current intelligence about the war in the north. The Felk were moving once more, having settled the occupation of Sook.

  Honnis hadn't shared with Praulth any details about the source or sources of his information, and she didn't have time to speculate. She had spent the past quarter-lune poring over the battle synopses. She had submerged herself in the study.

  She was envied for her talents by her fellow pupils. They saw how deftly she absorbed lessons, grasping the material and adding to it her personal insights, rather than merely making restatements. What most of those average students didn't understand was the effort she put forth.

  Praulth didn't simply study surfaces. She virtually assumed the personas of those she studied, even the "personalities" of historical events and locales.

  History was not inanimate. Praulth accepted it as a kind of ultra-reality, weighing over the present, influencing, directing, birthing events as surely as women brought forth their generations of children. The past did not die.

  If any wished to argue the point, she now had proof beyond her convictions. Dardas. The famed (at least among war scholars) general of the Northland. He lived. Almost impossibly, but it was so.

  Praulth of course didn't believe that the two-and-a-half-centuries-dead war commander had

  reconstituted himself from moldering meat and bones and was now leading the Felk army in its southward campaign to claim the Isthmus. The dead didn't need to parade about before the living to prove her point that history was immortal.

  Dardas was dead. Yes. But his tactics, his unprecedented brilliance on the battlefield, survived him. Weisel. Lord Weisel of the Felk. That was the vessel that was carrying Dardas's ... well, spirit, she supposed, though her rational mind immediately balked at the term.

  Praulth had marked Weisel's name. History was occurring now, history that even the ignorant and indifferent would remember. The Felk meant to conquer the Isthmus.

  This she knew. They had the means, and they had chosen the proper time for the move. No other state stood strong enough to oppose the Felk. The Northerners had amassed a powerful army and were adding to it with each city they subdued. They were using wizardry, a practice that was changing the face of warfare forever. She had learned of Matokin, a mage. Evidently he had established himself as the ruler of the Felk and had fostered this war.

  Master Honnis had wanted to know why the Felk had obliterated U'delph. She had dutifully examined the battle precis. She had reached her conclusions.

  U'delph's eradication seemed meant to incite resistance. Not—as at first seemed obvious—to intimidate the Felk's future opponents into surrender.

  She had immersed herself in this Lord Weisel, who himself was effectively embodying the long-dead Dardas. Weisel was plainly an exemplary war scholar to know the Northlander general's methods so well. Praulth could only imagine how rewarding it would be to sit and talk with him, for days on end, trading historical insights.

  She sighed.

  What had occurred at U'delph was certainly deliberate. Atrocities, historically, were often unplanned, happening sometimes despite all efforts to prevent them; but U'delph wasn't like that.

  Dardas, in his day, had been known to commit similar acts of annihilation. These always occurred when his enemies were most disorganized, and the effect was almost always to rouse those adversaries into action.

  U'delph's annihilation might not necessarily be a demonstration of power. It could be taken for a challenge. A dare. U'delph might have been so ruthlessly destroyed in order to cause outrage, horror... and to impel defiance.

  Praulth didn't understand why Weisel might be doing this, but deep within she felt certain of her findings. She was operating on a level of logic so advanced it could contrarily be misunderstood as instinct. Or magic.

  She had of course told Master Honnis her conclusions. He agreed. Just as he agreed with her larger assessment that the Felk's ultimate intent was to capture the entire Isthmus. As General Dardas before him, Lord Weisel desired total conquest.

  And so eventually the war would come here to the deep south, to Febretree. Perhaps this was why she was able to care so little about neglecting her other studies in favor of this assignment, despite the fact that she was straying dangerously from the path toward academic success and security.

  But such deviating was encouraged, her coldly capable mind argued. Iconoclastic thinking was a far surer means of advancement within the University than sticking rigorously to the curriculum. That made her actions and behavior matters of pure logic, which pleased her.

  What pleased her more, though, was Xink.

  She liked the campus's Blue Annex. The quarters of a sixth-phase Attaché were indeed superior to her old cell, and a palace, when compared to conditions in the dormitories. It was roughly four times the space she'd had before. The floor was finished wood, not stone. (She even recognized the type of wood—blood-ash, a fine wood—and was surprised and amused that she retained any knowledge of timber from her Dral Blidst childhood.) There was a brazier where she heated water for tea—the tallgreen tea, of which Xink seemed to have an unaccountably inexhaustible supply.

  The two most important furnishings in the chamber were the desk and the bed.

  It was a broad, solid desk, and the chair was upholstered and quite comfortable. The bed was to her

  old bunk what... well... being sexually experienced was to being virginal!

  She hummed a bright little laugh to herself at the thought. That was something she was having to get used to. Laughter. Also smiling. Lately, when Xink fixed her with that gorgeous smoldering stare of his, she was able to return what she thought was an equally wanton look. She laughed a bit harder now, thinking of their first kiss and how awkward she had been, nearly swooning—not from passion, but from abject terror and uncertainty.

  It was incredible to think that before Xink no male had ever touched her in the least lustful way, had ever expressed the most minute carnal interest in her. She did not feel slighted in hindsight by this inattention. Quite simply, she hadn't known what she was missing out on. Whatever normal curiosities she might have experienced in her life had been ground under by her deep-seated social timidity and her overwhelming academic urges. Those had served to effectively bank her hormonal fires for all those years. It had taken Xink to awaken everything in her.

  He'd done a fine job. Her laugh turned to an outright snicker.

  "Did old Honnis bury a joke in there somewhere?" Praulth looked up from the papers. The desk was broad enough that she could spread them out. She had the detailed maps of the Felk battles arranged chronologically.

  Xink was rather pleasingly arranged himself, slung across the wide mattress of the bed, his robe on a hook near the door, next to her own. Since the brazier was lit several times a day for her tea, the chamber remained constantly and comfortably warm. She wondered how it would be in the winter. Surely warmer than any accommodations she'd enjoyed since arriving at Febretree six years ago.

  The gauzy shift—like those they all wore beneath their robes—clung to Xink's sleek, but muscular body. He was long-limbed, long of finger too. His hair was wildly over-grown and so dark it seemed to suck the lamplight from above. (That was another remarkable improvement about these lodgings—an actual clean-burning lamp; it hung from a bronze hook in the middle of the room, and they never seemed to run out of oil.) And his face, oh, his face...

  He was so beautiful, it defied all reason. His brows were thin but as dark as his lush, cascading hair; his eyes were limpid blue fleck
ed with gold and seemed to see always right through to her heart. His cheekbones were high, elegant, he had an angular jaw, and the sweet soft lips of his luscious mouth ...

  He had said something, asked a question. With a start, she made to answer. She loved him, yes, loved him dearly and desperately; but she didn't want to appear foolish in any way in front of him.

  "No, no joke," she said hastily. "Umm ... just more of the usual."

  He was smiling easily, so at ease with himself, so confident. He had been glancing over some of Mistress Cestrello's papers, which he needed to organize by the end of the next watch. It was nice that Xink sometimes came here to their quarters to work, since here was where she was throughout the day, and where she sometimes missed him terribly, waiting hungrily for the night, and bed. Bed had once meant only sleep.

  "What new doings of your Lord Weisel?" he asked casually.

  He knew of her assignment. Of course he knew; of course she had told him. How could she not share everything about herself with him? She wanted to give herself, utterly. How sweet the surrenders so far.

  "It's not what he does, it's what he will do," she said, trying to match his effortless smile but knowing hers was more of a giddy grin. "That's what interests Honnis."

  Knowing that Weisel was imitating Dardas's war techniques, Honnis had charged her with predicting the future movements of the Felk army. Weisel was presently within striking distance of three different city-states. Trael, Grat, and Ompellus Prime.

  Praulth had already had some success in predicting this war's smaller engagements, the military operations that overran the lesser burgs among the larger city-states. Since the Felk had moved on from Sook, she had calculated those moves that sacked villages and captured roads.

  Sometimes her deductions had the taste of intuitive leaps; yet they were not. She was always able to prop up these "feelings" with the hardest facts. She felt obligated to do so—to prove to Master Honnis that none of this was guess-work and, perhaps, to remind herself of that same thing.

  The surface of the desk started to blur slightly.

  She shifted on her chair. Comfortable or not, sitting in it watch after watch was its own sort of ordeal. Her body, beneath her own gauzy shift, felt stiff. She returned her gaze to Xink.

  She saw his bulge then, growing. She saw the new look in his eyes, one she recognized, one that set her blood singing. Suddenly her throat was dry, where elsewhere she suddenly was not. Longing that was agony, and bliss stole over her. She was rising to her feet, and he was there, waiting, ready, on the bed. Wanting her, needing her. So much she had learned. So much he had taught her. He was twenty-five to her twenty-two years. He had knowledge, worldliness, experience. Just as she now had experience, a dizzy mental satisfaction that complemented the bodily gratification so sublimely.

  It was a vast new vocabulary: manhood, nipples, engorgement, clitoris, ejaculation, contraceptive. How confused she had been when he'd first fit on that small tube of animal bladder, until he'd explained the function, until she understood that only ignorant country maids need bear children that they didn't want.

  She lay down on the bed. He buried himself in her, and it seemed to go on forever.

  IT WAS HARDLY unheard of for two students to cohabitate, but Praulth had never imagined she would find herself doing so. Had never successfully imagined so many things, in fact.

  How quickly Xink had come into her life. Less than half a lune had passed since he had first left that cup of tall-green tea and the note outside her door. And now she was living with the handsome student who had achieved the academic rank of Attaché, a fine intelligent individual with a bright future, currently serving the University's sociology council and Mistress їestrello in particular. Incredible.

  She was happy. Impossibly happy.

  He had made it all so easy, from the first moment he introduced himself in one of the study parlors. He had confessed to bringing her the tea and to having had an infatuation for her for some while.

  She couldn't remember ever having seen him on campus before, but she wasn't one to focus on people. At least not people who weren't part of history.

  Later she returned to the desk, spent and thoroughly refreshed all at once, and knowing that the city-state of Trael was Lord Weisel/General Dardas's next logical target.

  RASTAC (2)

  SHE HAD NEVER been so high off the ground in her life. They built magnificent tall buildings in the Southsoil's grander cities, to be sure; but these Petgradites had something of a mania for towers, it seemed. In this administrative district of the city, the great stone spires punched toward the sky. This was evidently the tallest of all:

  She was looking out through a wall made of glass—expertly cut, no. warps—and it made for an extraordinary view. She had chewed a corner of a mansid leaf before making the formidable climb up this tower's endless stairways. Petgrad's lights winked with individual clarity and life as she looked down on their array.

  She would need to procure more leaves soon.

  "There you are."

  This level was near the top of the tower, perhaps the very top, just underneath the cupola of luminous metal that capped the structure. Deo had undertaken the climb with her, not needing to pause to rest any more than she had.

  She saw the indistinct reflection in the glass and turned. The chamber was large and stylishly

  under-furnished, its every surface polished to a high gloss. Dusky red stone underfoot, brass fixtures twinkling from the walls here and there. There was incense burning, a cool, very pleasant scent.

  Deo turned from the nighttime view of the city as well. He and Radstac had spent time together the past several days. A fine few days. He had made good on his intention to hire her, though as yet, she'd done nothing but receive the goldies he put into her hand. She had retrieved her heavy combat sword from the Public Armory. And waited. It was possible, of course, he was merely paying for the use of her body; possible even that he wasn't a relative of Petgrad's premier at all, just some rich fool out to impress his new lover.

  She hadn't thought so, though. It wasn't that difficult to measure a man's character, and Deo rang true.

  "Uncle," he said now, crossing the gleaming floor toward the tall shape that had entered through doors of blood-oak wood.

  Her eyes went to this new figure. Tall, solid but not stocky, red hair much longer and fuller than Deo's, the same shade but shot through with a goldish blond. He wore a beard over features far craggier than those Deo had. The beard had grey in it. The blue eyes were stonier. But these two looked very much like relatives.

  Radstac watched as the two men—at least two ten winters apart in age, probably more—came together and spoke. She couldn't hear the words, but the rich sounds emanating from the older man made patterns that were almost tangible, dipping, rising, like music ...

  One had to travel to the Isthmus to get fresh mansid leaves of such quality.

  Eventually they turned and came toward her. The bearded one led. He wore a long lounging coat, sumptuous fabric, unsashed, its tails brushing the floor. Soft silent black shoes on his feet. The whites of his fierce blue eyes were reddened, but he didn't reveal his fatigue in his gait or the set of his coarse—and decidedly handsome—face.

  "Na Niroki Cultat," Deo said, behind, formally, "Premier of the Noble State of—"

  "I'm guessing she's deduced that by now, Nephew." Cultat halted. His hands folded themselves at his back. He looked at her, closely, briefly, then shifted his gaze past, to the panoramic window.

  She had surrendered her weapons before being admitted to this chamber, including her glove. Deo had told her to do so, and she was working for him: There were also quite a few guards on the premises.

  This Cultat was a fighter. She didn't need any mansid-inspired clarity to see that. Deo had dueling scars on his arms. She would wager that his uncle had them as well— and that whoever had put them there hadn't had an easy time of it.

  "What do you think of our city?" He h
ad a voice comfortable at command, but this was just a question, an honest one.

  "Attractive. Clean. Prosperous."

  "Better cities back home, I'd guess. Home"—a thoughtful hum rumbled briefly in his throat—"I daresay ... Republic of Dilloqi. Yes?"

  Her colorless eyes widened. She hadn't told Deo the specifics of her origins.

  "Thought so. I went south once, before my University days. To the Southsoil, with a pair of comrades more reckless and fearless and asinine even than I. I abandoned my duties, my family. We rode to the city of Ichuloo. We were there for Modyah Te Mody's abdication of her rule. Heard the criers in the streets. All three of us grotesquely drunk. Stumbled our way to the palace to see. I vomited out my guts on the way. Saw the soldiers turning back the crowds. Screaming, hysterics, violence—"

  "A dark episode in Ichuloo's history," Radstac said, trying to equate this poised premier with the rash young idiot he was sketching for her.

  "Indeed. Was a beautiful city, though." His gaze was still past her, through the glass. "What do you think of our people here?"

  "As a people... blind fools. Individually is another matter."

  "Yes. It's always that way, isn't it? When my two friends and I rode back, my father put me in a cell. He had a legal order for it. I'd reneged on my duties, you see, though to me at that age everything that was ever asked of me was a vast imposition. I was a premier's son, and I wanted, essentially, to be thoroughly indulged until the time came for me to assume my father's place. The burden of the premier's

  post is often lifted from a parent's back and set on that of its child. But it is not always so. The Noble Ministry has the power to block an ascendancy, and with me, they would very likely have done so, but I was too obtuse to really see that. My days in that cell my father put me in, though—and there were quite some many days—along with my time at the University ... well, it all served me. I learned. I grew."