Wartorn: Resurrection w-1

by Robert Asprin

  Bryck thought it a very wise move. This Jesile was no fool, surely. Let the Callahans—those that hadn't been conscripted into the Felk army—have their idiotic Lacfoddalmendowl. They would be joyous at being permitted to publicly observe the holiday. They would perhaps even be grateful to the Felk governor for his generosity.

  And so the Callahans might sink a little further into their conquered complacency, which would make them easier to manage and of better value as assets to the growing Felk Empire.

  Few adults were without their cups of stife. Bryck wondered what the streets would be like later in the day. No doubt, though, all these activities were being monitored. Even as he thought this, he saw two soldiers standing by a stone wall in armor and helmets, weapons sheathed, observing. If anything got out of hand, it wouldn't remain so for long.

  Lacfoddalmendowl... the word sounded like some ancient bastardization. He had heard it was Callah's oldest festival.

  To blend, he had purchased the pink and red streamers, had tied the strips of cloth appropriately about his left wrist, leaving the ends to dangle. One was supposed to wave one's arm, trailing the colorful ribbons, and this he did now and then. Others were wrapped neck to ankle in the streamers and dancing mad whirling jigs.

  Lacfoddalmendowl would serve Bryck well, of course. So far, two successful sigils. No one had seen, no alarm raised. He kept a wary eye out for soldiers. It was time for another sigil. Over the course of what promised to be a busy chaotic day, he hoped to leave quite a few of these emblems on walls and posts and doors throughout the city.

  'YOU'RE THE STRINGBOX player. I saw you play."

  He was holding out two green bronze notes, buying another kabob, apparently the traditional meal of this holiday.

  The vendor's eyes seemed to fill with pointed unsaid words. She looked roughly his own age, maybe a winter or two younger. Her cart was parked nearby the mouth of a narrow side street. Revelers poured and staggered past.

  She still did not take his money, "It was good playing."

  "Thank you." He stood tense.

  "Where will you appear next?"

  He didn't like the intensity of her stare. "Appear?"

  "To play your 'box ... and to speak."

  "I play when I need money," he said, now forcing the notes into her hand. "I am a troubadour."

  "Yes." She was nodding. "Yes. Why trust me? Of course. Correct. You don't remember me from the evening when I heard you. There was a fair-sized crowd. Still, you changed my life that night."

  Suddenly she was holding out a cup of stife.

  "Joyous Lacfoddalmendowl."

  It would be wisest, of course, to simply scurry away. But Bryck found himself taking the drink. It was his first taste of the tart, green wine. It was at first quite awful, almost stinging; but as the aftertaste came, the richness of the flavor took hold.

  "I've a niece in Windal, you see," the vendor continued. "I asked you of her that night by name, but you didn't know her—and, of course, why would you? I couldn't but hope, though."

  "I'm sure she's well," he found himself saying.

  "The uprising," she said.

  He took another swallow of stife. It was helping the general ache in his head.

  "Violence in the streets, you said. Windal in chaos."

  "So I've heard on my travels." He bit into the kabob now. It was well past midday. He was tired, already nearly spent. And still there were several sigils to go.

  "You've not seen Windal yourself?" she pressed.

  "I never said I had." It was true. He had been careful never to claim that; had maintained he was only circulating prevalent rumors from the outside world. It was a way of not getting pinned to the "facts." It was delicate ... all of it, what he was trying to do, the machinations of his revenge.

  "I must go," he said. He drained the cup and handed it back to her.

  Her hand touched his elbow—lightly, but with tense fingers. "Please ... where will I see you again?"

  He knew he should flee—now. "Why?"

  "Because there are others, others I've told of your news from Windal. They want to hear the tales themselves."

  "They're not tales," Bryck lied.

  "I know. Yes, I know. But... all of us who heard that night, we carried the news, passed it onward. Now others want to hear it firsthand. From you. Where will you be that they can come to listen?"

  He blinked. It had worked. Worked better than he'd imagined. He had played half a dozen times in the city, at various taverns; and after each evening's playing, his audience had implored him for news of the lands outside Callah. And so he told them about the "uprising" in the Felk-occupied city of Windal.

  "What is your name?" he asked impulsively.

  "Quentis."

  Her eyes were a soft amber, Bryck noted. Then he turned and fled down a side street.

  IT WAS NOISY in the marketplace. Private industries were still doing business in Callah. Ceramicists, tool-makers, leather goods manufacturers. Bryck wondered about their raw materials, though. Eventually, it seemed, they would run out of local supplies. If the Felk wanted the city's enterprises to survive, they would have to allow goods to be brought in once more from outside the city limits. Some travel restrictions would have to be lifted.

  Restrictions that didn't apply to him, he thought with more than a little satisfaction. It had been damned clever of him to have that copyist, Slydis, falsify a new civilian travel pass for him. Now Bryck could take up his string-box and light out of Callah as a verifiable traveling minstrel whenever he wanted. He kept the paper on him at all times.

  The large whitewashed stones of the Registry loomed over the stalls and tents. The building was a natural hub, located as it was in the city's center, and now serving as the seat of the occupying Felk bureaucracy. Callah's largest marketplace abutted it.

  Bryck wandered through the haphazard rows. Lacfoddalmendowl hadn't slowed business much. He desperately wanted to return to his rented room, there to collapse into sleep. But there was still a watch

  of daylight left. He had work to do.

  He had collected a huge sheaf of bogus Felk scrip from Slydis's workshop two days ago. The dwarf copyist had done outstanding work. Bryck had studied the notes. The Felk evidently used an inked stamp on the differently colored bits of paper. Slydis had reproduced that stamp flawlessly. He had also scrounged up from gods knew where the precise stock of paper the Felk were using.

  Citizens hadn't liked trading their coin for paper. Merchants didn't like accepting it for goods and services. But the Felk decreed their scrip to be lawful currency.

  So be it.

  Bryck made continuous purchases in the marketplace. He looked for items that were easily portable and expensive. He bought things for which he had no need whatever—gaudy jewelry, ornate eating utensils, overpriced vials of exotic spices, a necklace of shells belonging to creatures that lived in the Bane Sea to the east (which apparently didn't mind swimming poisoned waters), if the dealer was to be believed.

  He haggled as little as possible, trying to pay as near to the full scandalous amounts as he could. He unloaded handfuls of the paper money Slydis had manufactured. He made many merchants very happy.

  Finally he headed for his lodgings. He would dispose of his purchases before he reached his room, though he thought he might keep the utensils, strictly as an indulgent luxury. It had been quite satisfying to commit his crimes in plain view of the Registry, beneath the very noses of the Felk. He had even passed a few soldiers among the stalls. No one had questioned the authenticity of his money, though more than one vendor had furtively hinted that coin would get him a more economical price.

  Meanwhile his counterfeit scrip, which was truly worth nothing more than ink and the paper it imprinted, now circulated among dozens of trading hands.

  HE FELL ONTO his bed. He had truly driven himself today.

  Bryck had already commissioned Slydis to create another large batch of notes, which he was due to collect tomorrow. Sly
dis, of course, was no doubt using the forged imprinting stamps for his own use. That served Bryck's purposes just fine. It didn't matter who was moving the crooked money, just as long as it got into circulation. Slydis could manufacture wealth that had no theoretical limits. He could make a thousand of the blue-colored goldie notes. Two thousand—or twenty. He needed only paper, ink, and time

  Falsifying coins wasn't a practical business. Perhaps that was why coins had remained the Isthmus's standard currency so many hundredwinters.

  This Felk system of paper money, however, was something else entirely. Bryck likened it to those "I-owe-unto" notes that desperate gamblers sometimes tried to pass. Like cheaters, those players usually found out quickly that games could become very serious, indeed.

  Criers were announcing the curfew in the street below. Lacfoddalmendowl had run its course.

  He'd had fun inventing the sigil. That was odd—enjoying himself, even just a little bit. He had become a creature of cold hate and little else. He was seeing to his vengeance against his enemy with cold-blooded callousness.

  Yet, crafting that emblem had engaged him. It wasn't of great importance what he settled on; he knew that. He needed only some distinct—preferably simple—symbol that people would readily recognize. It need only be original.

  Nevertheless, the former artist in him insisted the sigil be just right.

  Bryck had finally settled on a circle cut through by a vertical line. Simple. Easily memorized. It satisfied him. The circle, in old myths, was regarded as a symbol of evil. Its closed loop represented the eternalness of what was wicked in life, since bad times never went away entirely.

  That was still true today, he thought ruefully.

  The vertical line, of course, cut the cycle. Bryck was pleased with the sign's underlying message, even if no one else ever grasped it. After he had first conceived of the slashed circle, he had practiced awhile here in his room scorching it onto a scrap of cloth he'd found in the street.

  That emblem was now burned onto twenty-eight wood surfaces in twenty-eight different places in the

  city.

  He found his weary eyes unfocusing as they turned up toward the ceiling. His left wrist was still trailing the pink and red streamers. He had used more wizardry today than on any other single day in his life. It had been costly, and now he was paying. He felt feverish.

  It had gone so well, though, so successfully. He was proud.

  Searing that slashed circle onto the surface of a wall or door was a different order of magnitude from influencing dice. He'd had to keep the sigil's shape clearly in mind as he cooperated with those energies that allowed the wood to heat and char. He had also been performing these feats at some minor distance—standing, say, across a street, focusing his will, burning the emblem onto a temporarily unnoticed wall, while all about, the Lacfoddalmendowl celebrants capered and raised their distracting tumult.

  It wouldn't have done, for instance, to go wandering about Callah physically branding that design onto surfaces here and there. His way was safer, subtler, more insidious. It appealed to the style of vengeance he'd embraced.

  Tomorrow and the days that followed he would give meaning to the sigil, which he'd gone to such lengths to make appear all about the city.

  He had no accurate means of determining what effect his efforts were having. That was frustrating. But he had resigned himself to the fact. Surely flooding the market with counterfeit money was going to have a detrimental impact on Callah's economy. Just as surely, his tales of violent resistance against the Felk in Windal were stirring up these Callahans. Of that at least he now had some proof— and was grateful for it.

  He was pleased he'd met that female vendor Quentis. He could see her amber eyes now, even as his were drifting shut.

  Bryck at last untied the streamers and removed his boots. He felt even hotter now. Weaker. No. He couldn't afford a fever. He needed rest urgently. It had been a long Lacfoddalmendowl.

  He collapsed into deep sleep.

  DARDAS (4)

  "HALT!"

  Dardas reined his horse. It was a fine beast, strong and robust. It tossed its head as it came to a stop.

  He held a gloved hand high in the air. It was well past midday, and the air was cooler than it had been yesterday. Of course, this weather was nothing compared to an average autumn day on the Northern Continent. As for a Northland winter, well, he wondered if snow even fell here on this Isthmus.

  As general, he naturally rode toward the rear of his army. So it was that he had an excellent view of its many units as they, too, gradually came to a halt, as word of his order spread. It was by now quite a vast army, swollen with troops from Felk, Callah, Windal, and Sook. They were all under his command. With a word and a raised hand, he had halted this vast military force here in its tracks.

  A rush of exhilaration surged through him. What power he had!

  His senior staff was automatically gathering. Dardas remained atop his horse, surveying his mighty military apparatus. Matokin might think this was his army. He was wrong. Armies belonged to their generals.

  This was not a scheduled food or rest break. Dardas's officers were curious as to why he had ordered the halt. They were only two more days of traveling from Trael.

  Berkant, too, was lingering on the edge of the gathering. The Far Speak specialist no doubt imagined the general would want to make an immediate report to Matokin in Felk.

  "Bivouac!" Dardas called in the same thunderous voice of command.

  His senior officers looked bewildered, but they relayed the order. When it became plain that the general had no further commands, they dispersed. Dardas watched, pleased, as his army set about making camp. They were becoming very efficient troops.

  Eventually, he dismounted. His groom took the horse. Berkant, Dardas saw, was still loitering nearby. He called the mage over with a wave.

  "Yes, General?" the young wizard asked.

  "Are we in contact with the advance scouts? Those Far Movement mages?"

  "Uh ... of course, General. But it's Mage Limmel that is in charge of field operations—"

  "I know," Dardas nodded.

  Those scouting parties, by necessity, included both Far Movement and Far Speak wizards. How else could the opening of a portal be coordinated between two distant points? Naturally, a squad of regular soldiers accompanied these parties.

  "I want to know their exact positions around Trael," Dardas went on. "Report to my aide personally within the watch."

  "Yes, General Weisel."

  "And, Berkant."

  "General?"

  "I will be reporting to Lord Matokin later in the day," Dardas said, almost casually. "He'll no doubt want to know what we're up to here."

  "I am at your disposal, sir," Berkant bowed, his guileless face unable to hide an expression of relief. Off he went.

  Dardas allowed himself a small, private smile. Naturally he had no intention of letting Matokin in on his real plans. He already resented having to report to the Felk leader.

  His latest aide was also hovering nearby. Dardas called her over.

  "General Weisel?"

  "I've made a special requisition from the food storehouses in Windal," he said. "A shipment will be arriving from there by portal very soon. I've ordered some cured meats set aside for our troops. Choice cuts. Should be a welcome change from the rations they have been eating."

  Again, he smiled, this time letting his aide see. She couldn't quite repress an answering smile of her own. It was common knowledge among the ranks by now that General Weisel ate the same food as his troops.

  Off she went as well.

  Dardas saw that his pavilion had been erected. Instead of entering, however, he turned and strode off, snatching up an anonymous-looking cloak as he went.

  IF ONE KNEW what one was doing, it was easy to move unnoticed through the camp.

  Dardas avoided officers or anyone of rank who looked like they were in the mood to bark orders. His cloak hid his insignia
s. He looked like a nameless soldier, which suited his purposes perfectly.

  This was something he had done from time to time in the old days, when he was leading his brave, ferocious troops across the Northland. It hadn't all been battles, of course, despite what history seemed to have recorded about Dardas the Butcher. Like this army, his former one had encamped regularly, pausing to eat, drink, rest, and tell ribald tales around their campfires.

  Dusk was settling in. It made him even more of a vague shadow.

  "Why're we stopped? Do y'think we got orders from Felk?"

  "I'm just grateful for the rest."

  "Me too. Cavalry and officers ride horses. We infantry go it on foot."

  The men and women were sprawled around the campfire. A bottle of something was being passed around. Dardas lingered within earshot.

  "But what about Trael?"

  "What about it?"

  "Aren't we supposed to be invading it? I mean, why stop here, a day or two away?"

  It was the oldest among the circle who answered, a jowly sergeant. "The general has his reasons."

  "What makes you think Weisel ordered this?" a younger soldier with a wispy mustache retorted with a sneer. "Everyone knows that spook Matokin is pulling the strings from all the way up there in Felk."

  The sergeant looked flatly at him. "Kid, do you really think a mage could command an army as good as the general has?"

  The younger soldier shrugged, making it look insolent. "Why not?"

  "Because, ass, Matokin isn't even here in the field with us. You can't just receive reports by Far Speak and study maps and know what move to make. Not unless you're some kind of incredible war theory genius. And Matokin's not that. He's a godsdamned clever wizard, and he'll make a great emperor when we're done conquering his empire, but it's General Weisel who is leading us here. Don't you forget that!"