Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

"The latest mage-storm passed three days ago," he said. "I have been taking reports since then." He leafed through the papers he had read so often that the words danced before his mind's eye. Give them some good news. "The last of the stragglers from that engagement outside Spangera trickled in right before it passed. Every man's been accounted for, one way or another. The preliminary palisades were finished just as the storm hit, so we are now all behind some kind of wall or other." He let them digest that bit of good news for a moment, as a palliative to all the unpleasant information they'd had until now. The shutters behind him rattled in a sudden gust of wind, and the candles flickered as another draft swept the room. This time it was a puff of warm air that touched him, scented with wax and lamp oil.

  Shonar Manor, the locals called this place; he'd chosen well when he'd chosen to make it the place where the Imperial Army would dig in and settle down. This fortified manor he had taken as his own had no one to claim it, or so he had been told; Ancar had seen to that. Whether he'd slaughtered the family, root and branch, or simply seen to it that they were all sent into the front lines of his war with Valdemar, Tremane did not know. Nor did it matter, in truth, except that there would be no inconvenient claimants with backers from the town to show up and cause him trouble. The walled city of Shonar itself could hardly hold a fraction of his men, of course, even if he'd displaced the citizens, which he had no intention of doing. They were much more useful right where they were, forming a fine lot of hostages against the good behavior of their fellows—and in the meantime, providing his men with the amenities of any good-sized town. In fact, they were being treated precisely as if they were Imperial citizens themselves so long as they made no trouble. For their part, after their first alarms settled, they seemed satisfied enough with their lot. Imperial silver and copper spent as well as any other.

  From the reports Tremane had gotten since the last mage-storm cleared, it was a good thing for everyone that he did get all his men together before it broke.

  "The scouts are reporting a fair amount of damage in the countryside this time," he said, turning over another page without really reading what was written there. "This time it's not just the circles of strange land appearing everywhere. Though we've a fair number of those, and they're bigger, there are fewer of them emerging—but we have something entirely new on our hands." He regarded them all with a grave expression; they looked up at him expectantly. "I'm certain that at one time or another each of you has seen mage-made creatures; perhaps some of the attempts to recreate the war-beasts of the past like gryphons or makaar. It appears that the mage-storms are having a similar changing effect on animals and plants, but with none of the control that there would be with a guiding mind behind the magic."

  "Monsters," he heard someone murmur, and he nodded to confirm that unpleasant speculation.

  "Monstrous creatures indeed," he acknowledged. "Some of them quite horrifying. So far none of them have posed any sort of threat that a well-trained and well-armed squad could not handle, but let me remind you that this last storm hit us by day. What is relatively simple for men to deal with by day may become a much more serious threat in the dark of night."

  What if the animal trapped had been something larger than a bull, or smarter than a sheep? What if it had been an entire herd of something? He sighed, and ran his hand through his thinning hair. "This," he pointed out fairly, "is going to do nothing for morale which, as most of you have reported to me, is at the lowest point any of you have ever seen in an Imperial Army."

  He turned over another page. "According to your reports, gentlemen," he continued, nodding in the direction of his officers, "this is also to be laid at the feet of the mage-storms. I have had reports of men being treated by the Healers for nothing more nor less than fear, so terrified that they cannot move or speak—and not all of them are green recruits either." As the officers stirred, perhaps thinking of an attempt to protest or defend themselves, he gazed upon them with what he hoped was a mixture of candor and earnest reassurance. "There is no blame to be placed here, gentlemen. Your men are trained to deal with combat magic, but not with something like this—certainly not with something which is so random in the way it strikes and what it does. There is nothing predictable about these storms; we do not even know when they will wash over us. That is quite enough to make even the most hardened veteran ill-at-ease."

  Yes, the one question none of us will ask. What if the mage-storm changes not only beasts, but men?

  He smiled a little, and his officers relaxed. "Now, as it happens, this is actually working in our favor. My operatives in unsecured areas tell me that the Hardornens are just as demoralized as our men. Perhaps more so; they are little used to seeing the effects of magic close at hand. And certainly they are not prepared for these misshapen monsters that spring up as a result of the storms. So, on the whole, they have a great deal more to worry about than we do—and that can only be good news for us."

  In point of fact, active resistance had evaporated; it had begun to fade even before the last mage-storm had struck. He watched his officers as they calculated for themselves how long it had been since a serious attack had come from the Hardornen "freedom fighters" and relaxed minutely as he saw them relaxing.

  "Now—that is the situation as it stands," he concluded, with relief that his speech was over. "Have any of you anything to add?"

  Gordun stood. "Following your orders, Your Grace, we are concentrating all our efforts on getting a single Portal up and functioning. It will not remain functional after the next storm, but we believe we can have it for you within a few days, with all of us concentrating on that single task."

  May the Thousand Little Gods help us. Gordun by himself could have created and held a Portal before these damned storms started. Will we find ourselves wearing skins and chipping flint arrowheads next?

  He nodded, noting the faintly surprised and speculative looks his officers were trading. Did any of them have an inkling of what he was about?

  Probably not. On the other hand, that is probably just as well.

  Finally, at long last, it was the scholar's turn; he did not even recognize the timid man urged to his feet by the sharp whispers of his fellows, which argued for more bad news.

  "W-we regret, Y-your G-grace," the fellow stammered nervously, "there is n-nothing in any r-records to g-give us a hint of a s-solution to the s-storms. W-we l-looked for hidden c-ciphers or other k-keys as you asked, and there was n-nothing of the s-sort."

  He didn't so much sit down as collapse into his seat. Tremane sighed ostentatiously, but he did not rebuke the poor fellow in any way. Even if he'd been tempted to—the man couldn't help it if there was nothing to find in the records, after all—he was afraid the poor man would faint dead away if the Grand Duke even looked at him with faint disapproval.

  These scholars are hardly a robust lot. Or perhaps it is just that they are neither fish nor fowl—neither ranked with the mages nor bound to the army, and thus have the protections of neither.

  Odd. That wasn't anything he would have taken much thought for, in the past. Perhaps because he knew they were on their own, he was taking no man for granted, not even a scholar with weak eyes and weaker muscles.

  "Gentlemen," he said, even as those thoughts were running through his head, "now you know the worst. Winter is approaching, and much more swiftly than any of us thought possible." As if to underscore his words, the shutters that had been rattling were hit by a sudden fierce gust that sounded as if they'd been struck by a missile flung from a catapult. "I need your help in planning how we are to meet it when it comes. We need shelter for the men, walls to protect us, not only from the Hardornens, but from whatever the mage-storms may conjure up. We cannot rely on magic—only what our resources, skills, and strength can provide." He cast his eyes over all of them, looking for expressions that seemed out of place, but found nothing immediately obvious. "Your orders are as follows; the engineering corps are to create a plan for a defensive wall that can be const
ructed in the shortest possible time using army labor and local materials. The rest of you are to inventory the civilian skills of your men and pool those men whose skills can provide us shelter suitable for the worst winter you can imagine. Do not neglect the sanitation in this; we are going to need permanent facilities now, something suitable for a long stay, not just latrine trenches. Besides shelter, we will need some way to warm that shelter and to cook food—if we begin cutting trees for the usual fires, we'll have the forest down to stumps before the winter is half over." Was that enough for them to do? Probably, for now. "You scholars, search for efficient existing shelters, ones that hold heat well, and some fuel source beside wood. If you find anything that looks practical, bring it to my attention. Mages, you have your assignment. Gentlemen, you are dismissed for now."

  The men had to wait to file out of the great double doors at the end of the hall, suffering the cold blasts penetrating the hall as one of the shutters broke loose and slapped against the wall. The Grand Duke was not so bound; his escape was right behind the dais, in the form of a smaller door at which his bodyguard waited, and he took it, grateful to be out of that place. The short half-cape did nothing to keep a man warm; he wanted a fire and a hot drink, in that order.

  The guard fell in silently behind him as he headed for his own quarters, his thoughts preoccupied with all the things he had not—yet—told his men.

  The mages probably guessed part of it. They were not simply cut off, they had been abandoned, left to fend for themselves, like unwanted dogs.

  The Emperor, with all the power of all the most powerful mages in the world at his disposal, could (if he was truly determined) overcome the disruptions caused by the mage storms to send some kind of message. Tremane had never heard of a commander being left so in the dark before; certainly it was the first time in his own life that he had no clue what Charliss wanted or did not want of him.

  There could be several causes for this silence.

  The most innocent was also, in some ways, the most ominous. It was entirely possible that the mage-storms wreaking such havoc here could be having an even worse effect within the Empire itself. The Empire had literally been built on magic; distribution of food depended upon it, and communications, and a hundred more of the things that underpinned and upheld the structure of the Empire itself. If that was the case—

  They're in a worse panic than we are here. Civilians have no discipline; as things break down, they'll panic. He was enough of a student of history himself to have some inkling what panicking civilians could do. Rioting, mass fighting, hysteria... in a city, with all those folk packed in together, there would be nothing for it but to declare martial law. Even then, that wouldn't stop the fear or the panic. It would be like putting a cork on a bottle of wine that was still fermenting; sooner or later, something would explode.

  Tremane reached the warm solitude of his personal suite, waving to the bodyguard to remain outside. That was no hardship; the corridors provided more shelter from the cold drafts than half of the rooms did. Fortunately, his suite was tightly sealed and altogether cozy. He closed the door to his office with a sigh. No drafts here—he could remove his short winter cloak and finally, in the privacy of his quarters, warm numb fingers and frozen toes at a fire.

  The second possibility that had occurred to him was basically a variation on what he, himself, had just ordered. The Emperor could have decreed that literally everything was to be secondary to finding a way for the mages to protect the Empire from these storms. There would be no mages free to try and reopen communications with this lost segment of the army. The Empire itself might be protected, but that might very well be all the mages could manage.

  But the Empire would hardly spend such precious resources as Imperial mages on the protection of client-states. No, only the core of the Empire, those parts of it that were so firmly within the borders that only scholars recalled what names they had originally borne, would be given such protection.

  Which means, he mused, feeling oddly detached from the entire scenario, that the client states are probably rearming and revolting against Charliss. If the Empire itself is under martial law, all available units of the army have been pulled back into the Empire to enforce it. They won't be spending much time worrying about us.

  No, one segment of the Imperial Army, posted off beyond the borders of the farthest-flung Imperial Duchy, was not going to warrant any attention under conditions that drastic.

  But no one born and raised in the Imperial Courts was ever going to stop with consideration of the most innocent explanations. Not when paranoia was a survival trait, and innocence its own punishment.

  So, let us consider the most paranoid of scenarios. The one in which our enemy is the one person who might be assumed to be our benefactor. It was entirely possible that these mage-storms were nothing new to Emperor Charliss. He could have known all along that they were going, to strike, and where, and when. In fact, it was possible that these storms were a weapon that Charliss was testing on them.

  Tremane grew cold with a chill that the fire did nothing to warm.

  This could be a new terror-weapon, he thought, following the idea to its logical conclusion, as his muscles grew stiff with suppressed tension. What better weapon than one that disrupts your enemy's ability to work magic, and leaves land and people beaten down but relatively intact?

  There was even a "positive" slant to that notion. Perhaps this was a new Imperial weapon that was meant only to act as an aid to them in their far-distant fight, and it simply had a wider field of effect than anyone ever imagined.

  But far more likely was the idea that, since no one knew precisely what the weapon was going to do, it was tested out here, in territory not yet pacified, so that any effect on Imperial holdings would be minimal. Tremane and his men were nothing more than convenient methods by which the effectiveness of the weapon could be judged—

  Which would mean that they are watching us, scrying us, seeing how we react and what we do, and whether or not the locals have the wit to do the same. This lack of communication was a deliberate attempt to get them to react without orders, just to see what they would do.

  If this happened to be the true case, it ran counter to every law and custom that made the Army the loyal weapon that it was. It would be a violation of everything that Imperial soldiers had a right to expect from their Emperor.

  For that matter, being left to fend for themselves was almost as drastic a violation of that credo.

  In either case, however, this would not be above what could be done to test a candidate for the Iron Throne. Other would-be heirs had been put through similar hardships before.

  But not, his conscience whispered, their men with them.

  That was what made him angry. He did not mind so much for himself; he had expected to be tested to the breaking point. It was that the Emperor had included his unwitting men in the testing.

  There was no denying that, for whatever reason, Charliss had abandoned them. There had been time and more than time enough for him to have sent them orders via a physical messenger. This silence was wrong, and it meant that there was something more going on than appeared on the surface. It was the Emperor's sworn duty to see to the welfare of his soldiers in times of crisis, as it was their sworn duty to protect him from his enemies. They had kept their side of the bargain; he had reneged on his.

  It would not be long before the rest of the army knew it, too. In a situation like this, they all were aware they should have been recalled long ago. Since there was no way that a Portal could be brought up that was large enough to bring them all home, Charliss should have sent in more troops to provide a corridor of safety so that they could march home. And he should have done all this the moment the mage storms began, when it became obvious that they were getting worse. Then they would not only have been safely inside the Empire by now, they would have been on hand to deal with internal turmoil. That meant a kind of double betrayal, for somewhere, someone was going short
handed, lacking the troops he needed to keep the peace because the Emperor had decided to abandon them here.

  Or rather, it was more likely that he had opted to abandon Tremane and, with him, his men. He had probably written Tremane off as the potential heir because he had not achieved a swift victory over Hardorn, and had chosen this as the most convenient way to be rid of him.

  And if I cannot contrive a way to bring us all safely through the winter, they will suffer with me.

  That was the whole point of his anger. He had been schooled and trained as an Imperial officer; he had been an officer before he ever became a Grand Duke. This callous abandonment was counter to both the spirit and the letter of the law, and it made Tremane's blood boil. It represented a betrayal so profound and yet so unique to the Empire that he doubted anyone born outside the Empire would ever understand it, or why it made his skin flush with rage.

  The men would certainly understand it, though, when they finally deduced the truth for themselves and then worked through their natural impulse to assume that anything so wrong could not be true. And at that point—

  At that point they will cease to be soldiers of the Empire. No, that's not true. They will be soldiers of the Empire, but they will cease to serve Charliss.

  He sat down in the nearest chair, all in a heap, as the magnitude of that realization struck him. Revolt—it had not happened more than a handful of times in the entire history of the Empire, and only once had the revolt been against an Emperor.

  Was he ready to contemplate revolt? Unless he did something drastically wrong, it was to him that the men would turn if they revolted against Charliss. Was he prepared to go along with that, to take command of them, not as a military leader, but as the leader of a revolt?

  Not yet. Not... yet. He was close, very close, but not yet prepared to take such drastic action.

  He shook his head and ordered his thoughts. I must keep my initial goals very clearly in mind. I must not let anything distract me from them until the men are secured to face this coming winter. That is my duty, and what the Emperor has or has not done has no bearing on it. He set his chin stubbornly. And to the deepest hells with anyone who happens to get in my way while I am seeing to that duty!